THE COLLECTED SPEECHES OF ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY (1834-1915)
“When the Revolutionary war cloud burst . . .” – circa October 19, 1915
Nothing is certain about this untitled, five-page, edited manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers, except that Abigail wrote it. Most probably, she composed it in celebration of the 134th anniversary of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. Because she refers to herself in the third person, it seems intended for print, not the podium. And it is […]
Nothing is certain about this untitled, five-page, edited manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers, except that Abigail wrote it. Most probably, she composed it in celebration of the 134th anniversary of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown. Because she refers to herself in the third person, it seems intended for print, not the podium. And it is unfinished, lacking a conclusion.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_1_123" id="identifier_1_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A parenthetical notation, not in her hand and of unknown origin and reliability, attributes the text to “A.S.D. herself, Oct. 1915.” Accepting this at face value, October 19, the anniversary of the Revolution’s end, is by far the most likely (although examination of the Oregonian confirmed no celebratory event for which a text like this might have been intended.) A second, equally mysterious notation on the back of the final page reads “Oct. 18, 1915.” However, no sufficiently “historic day”–connected to the Revolution or otherwise–appears to correspond to this date. Other candidates for the occasion seem highly unlikely, including: October 12, Columbus Day (the day of her funeral, as things turned out); October 30, Oregon State Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition (the San Francisco world’s fair), which she already had attended earlier in the year; or October 2, the final day of the Oregon State Fair, on which pioneers were honored. Although ghost-writing would have been exceedingly unusual, it is conceivable that this was intended to be delivered orally but, owing to her incapacitation, by someone other than herself. That she had surgery for an infected toe on October 2, but never recovered, may account for its unfinished condition.">1 In any event, this may well be the final item Abigail ever prepared for public consumption: She died on October 11, eight days before the anniversary and eleven days shy of her eighty-first birthday. Scott Duniway gives a brief history of the Oregon Territory, including the boundary dispute with Great Britain, tells of the territory’s first pioneer women and their trials (including, of course, herself), and closes with an excerpt from her address at the Columbian Exposition, positing that nature itself eulogizes their memory. Abigail comments that her oratory is “always extemporaneous.” As the materials assembled in this archive reveal, this does not quite tell the full story. When the Revolutionary war cloud burst over the heads of our fore-fathers and foremothers of Colonial days, the mighty land “where rolls the Oregon”2 was practically, so far as the Colonies were concerned, an undiscovered country. Oregon, therefore, has no history which belongs primarily, to the Revolutionary war. But she has a most important secondary history of which it is proper to make special mention on this historic day. France, in the year 1803, sold to the United States all of her possessions in America, to which England had previously, in the year 1763, transferred to France, including whatever she claimed “West of the Mississippi River.”3 But England, having awakened to the importance of these American purchases, still urged a claim to the country. The treaty of Ghent in 1814 invoked peace<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_4_123" id="identifier_4_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Signed on December 24, officially concluding the War of 1812 (although, because word traveled slowly, not ending all hostilities). In it, Britain agreed to withdraw all troops from the American Northwest (at the time, the Ohio region).">4, but did not settle the final boundaries between the two countries until the treaty of 1846, when the lattitude of 54:40′ was made the basis of Territorial divisions<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_5_123" id="identifier_5_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Boundaries in Old Oregon were hopelessly tangled. Russia claimed south to the Columbia River; the U.S. and Great Britain both claimed south to the 42nd parallel (California) and north to the 60th. The Russian claim was resolved by treaties in 1824 and 1825, at 54% 40′ N (today’s border between Alaska and British Columbia). However, U.S. and British joint ownership persisted until a succession of provocative bills introduced in Congress by Senator Lewis Fields Linn, of Missouri, provided for the “reoccupation” of the country, establishment of military protection, and liberal land grant policies. The Democrats succeeded in electing James K. Polk to the Presidency in 1844 on a platform demanding exclusive U.S. control of the region, epitomized in the campaign slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight.” The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 compromised on the 49th parallel (Corning 33; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 184-93). Scott Duniway’s remembrance of the most aggressive American demand as historical fact could be simple carelessness, or something more.">5, thus settling a dispute between the United States and the Mother Country that had been threatening the peace and prosperity of the people ever since the Florida treaty of Feb 22, 1819.6 When Oregon became a component part of the Nation’s area she embraced within her boundaries all of Washington and Idaho and part of Montana and Wyoming. It will thus be seen that the Territory of Oregon covered a vast area which up to the time of the Florida treaty was a vast, almost unknown wilderness. But the spirit of the Mothers of the Revolution had, as early as the year 1835, found lodgment in the wilds of Oregon in the person of Narcissa Prentiss<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_7_123" id="identifier_7_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (1808-1847): born Prattsburg, New York; attended Emma Willard’s Female Seminary, Troy, New York, 1828, and Franklin Institute, 1831; in 1835, applied to American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the missionary arm of several major denominations, for assignment to western native tribes; following marriage to Marcus Whitman, February 18, 1836, came to Oregon, settling at Waiilatpu; engaged in missionary work until massacred, 1847; she and Eliza Hart Spalding were the first white women to cross the Rockies (Wilkins; Drury, First 1: 25-170; Corning 264).">7 of the State of New York, a woman of rare accomplishments, a striking blonde, with form well developed and full, a voice of winning sweetness and an enthusiast in religion. Of the tragic fate of this woman, the heroic wife of Dr. Marcus Whitman<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_8_123" id="identifier_8_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1802-1847): gospel missionary and practicing physician, established mission among Cayuse natives at Waiilatpu, along Walla Walla River, 1836; amid increasingly strained relations, smallpox epidemic decimated natives, 1847, and led to massacre, on November 29, of Whitman, wife Narcissa, twelve others; fifty-three others held captive for some weeks; in retaliation, some nine hundred Willamette Valley settlers pursued those responsible across upper Columbia country for more than two years, 1847-50, with discouraging results, in Cayuse Indian War; five natives surrendered, were tried and hanged in Oregon City, spring, 1850 (Drury, Marcus Whitman; Drury, First 3: 279-88).">8, recent history is so full that particulars need not be related here. But mention must be made of Rev. H. H. Spalding’s<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_9_123" id="identifier_9_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Henry Harmon Spalding (1803-1874): born Bath, New York; converted to Christianity, 1822; entered Franklin Academy, 1825; attended and graduated, Western Reserve College, Ohio, 1831-33; married Eliza Hart, 1833; studied at Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, 1833-35; ordained and appointed missionary to Osage, but crossed continent with Whitmans, summer, 1836, establishing mission at Lapwai, where he printed first books in Oregon Country in Nez Perce language; following Whitman massacre, 1847, moved to Brownsville on Calapooya; returned periodically to Lapwai in years that followed, sometimes as Indian agent (Corning 229; Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding).">9 devoted wife<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_10_123" id="identifier_10_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Eliza Hart Spalding (1807-1851): born Berlin, Connecticut; married Henry Harmon Spalding at Trenton, New Jersey, Oct. 13, 1833; came to Oregon with Whitman party, 1836, one of first two white women to cross Rockies; taught Nez Perce Indian School at Lapwai, Idaho, 1836-47; following Whitman massacre, 1847, moved to Brownsville on Calapooya (Drury, “Spalding”; Corning 229; Drury, First 1: 173-233; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 318).">10, who excelled in all the useful branches of domestic life; who was an adept with the needle, could spin, weave and sew; was excessively religious, but was always cheerful with the Indian women and commanded their unbounded confidence and respect. Mrs. W. H. Gray<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_11_123" id="identifier_11_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Augusta Dix Gray (1810-1881): born Ballston Spa, New York; married William Henry Gray, 1838; came by horseback to Oregon, arriving at Whitman mission near Walla Walla, August, 1838, to work among Nez Perce at Spalding mission at Lapwai; returned to Whitman mission at Waiilatpu, 1839-42, then moved to Willamette Valley; later moved to Clatsop Plains, where helped form first Presbyterian church in northwest, 1846; finally settled in Astoria (Drury, First 1: 237-69; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 110-11; cf. Carey, History 2: 560-62; Gaston, Centennial 3: 579-80; Gaston, Portland 3: 786-88; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 318). Scott Duniway is confusing William Gray’s initial journey in 1836 with the couple’s subsequent trip two years later.">11, the beautiful, womanly and accomplished wife of the historian Gray<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_12_123" id="identifier_12_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Henry Gray (1810-1889): physician and lay missionary; born Farfield, New York; came to Oregon with Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding, 1836; returned, married, in 1838; secular agent to Methodist Mission near Salem, 1842; helped form Provisional Government, 1843; member, Provisional legislature, 1845; farmed on Clatsop Plains, 1846-55; later entered sawmill business, then mining supplies; wrote A History of Oregon, 1792-1849, which is partisan and even intolerant, but interesting and helpful, 1864-70–blunt descriptions of the other members of the overland party appear esp. on 178-79 (Dobbs 93-97; Drury, First 3: 233-50).">12 who crossed the almost untrodden Plains on horseback with her husband was the third woman of the advance guard who turned her face to the setting sun when Oregon was young. This missionary party started across the Plains and Mountains with three wagons, eight mules, twelve horses and sixteen cows. In the wagons were farming utensils, tools, seeds, clothing and other etcteras. On arriving at Fort Laramie the wagons were all abandoned except one. The party arrived at Fort Walla Walla on the 2d of September, 1836, after a long siege of such experiences as can hardly be conceived by those who cross the Continent now in a few days, on a Pullman car. Other missionaries and their heroic wives reached the Willamette Valley by sea in 1838, among them being three heroic women, wives of the Reverends E. Walker<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_13_123" id="identifier_13_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary A. Richardson Walker (1811-1897): born Baldwin, Maine; married Rev. Elkanah Walker (1805-1877), 1838; came to Oregon with the Grays, Eells, and Smiths as missionaries to Whitman’s mission at Waiilaptu, 1838; served at Tshimakain mission at Walker’s Prairie, 1839-48; lived at Fort Colville, 1848, moving to Willamette Valley in company of Oregon Volunteers after Whitman massacre; lived in Oregon City, 1848-49, helping organize Congregational Association there and Tualatin Academy (Pacific University) at Forest Grove; moved to Forest Grove to farm, 1849; seven children (Corning 256; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 109; Drury, Elkanah and Mary Walker; Drury, First 2: 21-44, 63-356, 3: 253-65; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 203).">13, Cushing Eells<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_14_123" id="identifier_14_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Myra Fairbanks Eells (1805-1878): born Massachusetts; married Rev. Cushing Eells (1810-1893), 1838; came to Oregon with Grays, Walkers, and Smiths as missionaries to Whitman’s mission at Waiilaptu, 1838; accompanied Walkers to Tshimakain mission until Whitman massacre of 1847, moving then to Willamette Valley; he taught at Oregon Institute, Salem, 1848, Tualatin Academy, Forest Grove, 1849-51, Washington Select School, 1851-57; they returned to Walla Walla area, 1862, promoting Whitman Seminary until 1869, when he resumed missionary work at Spokane; moved to Skokomish reservation on Puget Sound, 1872; two sons (Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 109-10; Drury, First 2: 47-121, 3: 291-304; Eells).">14 and A. B. Smith<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_15_123" id="identifier_15_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Gilbert White Smith (1813-1855): married Asa Bowen Smith and came to Oregon with Grays, Eells, and Walkers, 1838; established mission at Kamiah, 1839; abandoned, 1841, and went to Sandwich Islands (Hawaii); returned to Massachusetts, 1846; he constructed vocabulary and grammar of Nez Perce language; “a delicate woman, unfitted for the trials of missionary life” (Bancroft, History of Oregon 137-38; Drury, First 1: 273-80, 3: 25-229).">15. The wives of Reverends Waller<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_16_123" id="identifier_16_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elpha White Waller (1811-1881): born Rutledge county, Vermont; married Alvin F. Waller (1808-1872), 1832; started to Oregon from New York, October 1839, arriving via Cape Horn, June, 1840; he was ordained Methodist minister, stationed principally at Oregon City, helped build first Protestant church west of Rockies, c. 1843, then The Dalles, 1844, and Salem, 1847-57; he helped found Willamette University (Waller Hall being named for him) and Pacific Christian Advocate, 1853; three children (Corning 257; Oregon Native Son 2 (1900): 103; Lang 897; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 620; Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">16, Leslie<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_17_123" id="identifier_17_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary A. Kinney Leslie (?-1841): of prominent Pierce family of New England; first wife of Methodist missionary David Leslie (1797-1869), one of two magistrates for country south of Columbia River, 1839, chair of committee that drafted code of laws for Oregon Country, 1841, and chaplain of first territorial legislature, 1849; came to Oregon around Cape Horn, 1837; worked missions at Salem and Oregon City; six children (Corning 146; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 426-27; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 452-53; Dobbs 60-63).">17 and Lee<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_18_123" id="identifier_18_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Maria Pittman Lee (1803-1838): Methodist missionary and first wife of Rev. Jason Lee (1803-1845); born New York City, daughter of George Washington and Mary Spies Pittman; left by sailing vessel for Oregon Mission on Willamette, 1837; her boat met by Rev. Lee at Fort Vancouver, May 17; married July 16, became first white bride in Oregon Country; with Lee on fundraising trip east, gave birth to first white child born in Oregon, June 23, 1838; baby lived only two days; she died one day later (Corning 144).">18 should also be mentioned here, but the data is not at hand for further particulars on this occasion. Thenceforward, for many years the history of the Northwest Territory is silent on the “Woman Question” save when an accident or a massacre reveals a heroic incident in the lives of the constantly increasing numbers of wives and mothers who crossed the continent with husbands and sons, on foot, in ox wagons or on horseback, often holding wild beasts or wilder savages at bay in their lonely cabin homes, or tilling with their own hands the alluvial soil which readily yielded of their hidden substance to supply the homely table of the pioneer. There were no women historians in those days and woman remained for decades the great forgotten equation in the sum of men’s achievements. But, about the year 1870 a woman historian arose upon the scene, and the name of Frances Fuller Victor<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_19_123" id="identifier_19_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband, H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16).">19 the gifted author of “The River of the West”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwhen-the-revolutionary-war-cloud-burst-%e2%80%9d-october-19-1915/#footnote_20_123" id="identifier_20_123" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The River of the West. Hartford: Bliss, 1870. This is the story of mountain man Joseph Lafayette Meek, who came west in 1828 as an employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, eventually settling in Oregon (seeCorning 164).">20 and “All Over Oregon and Washington”21 became a household word. Also in 1871 there came suddenly to the front Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, a pioneer of the ox wagon era, who had spent 20 previous years as wife and mother on an Oregon farm, where she had reared a large family of sons and one beloved and beautiful daughter. This untaught woman of the border startled everybody by moving from the country to Portland and launching upon the sea of journalism a weekly newspaper, The New Northwest which at once commanded the attention of the public and finally brought its editor and proprietor national fame, together with a competence upon which she is now living in comparative retirement. The following specimen of Mrs. Duniway’s oratory, which is always extemporaneous, is found in that unique production of the Columbian Exposition of 1893 The World’s Congress of Women. In a “Tribute to the Pioneers” she said: The swaying pines of the lands they loved are left to us as a heritage, to chant their eternal requiem. The mighty mountains wear white crowns of everlasting snow in their honor, and the broad prairies adorn their lowly graves with regularly returning flowers as the seasons come and go. The iron horse wakes shrillest echoes where erst the bellowing of the belabored ox was heard. Steam and lightning have out-distanced time and conquered space in the years that have flown since they fell asleep. The mountains and the rocks are answering back to new conditions and the sons and daughters of the pioneers are confronted by new problems of which their parents scarcely dreamed. The air of Oregon is a pure as ether and the scenery as grand [sic] Heaven.22 NOTES A parenthetical notation, not in her hand and of unknown origin and reliability, attributes the text to “A.S.D. herself, Oct. 1915.” Accepting this at face value, October 19, the anniversary of the Revolution’s end, is by far the most likely (although examination of the Oregonian confirmed no celebratory event for which a text like this might have been intended.) A second, equally mysterious notation on the back of the final page reads “Oct. 18, 1915.” However, no sufficiently “historic day”–connected to the Revolution or otherwise–appears to correspond to this date. Other candidates for the occasion seem highly unlikely, including: October 12, Columbus Day (the day of her funeral, as things turned out); October 30, Oregon State Day at the Panama-Pacific Exposition (the San Francisco world’s fair), which she already had attended earlier in the year; or October 2, the final day of the Oregon State Fair, on which pioneers were honored. Although ghost-writing would have been exceedingly unusual, it is conceivable that this was intended to be delivered orally but, owing to her incapacitation, by someone other than herself. That she had surgery for an infected toe on October 2, but never recovered, may account for its unfinished condition. The title of a poem by Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (164-65). The Louisiana Purchase, concluded on December 20, 1803. Signed on December 24, officially concluding the War of 1812 (although, because word traveled slowly, not ending all hostilities). In it, Britain agreed to withdraw all troops from the American Northwest (at the time, the Ohio region). Boundaries in Old Oregon were hopelessly tangled. Russia claimed south to the Columbia River; the U.S. and Great Britain both claimed south to the 42nd parallel (California) and north to the 60th. The Russian claim was resolved by treaties in 1824 and 1825, at 54% 40′ N (today’s border between Alaska and British Columbia). However, U.S. and British joint ownership persisted until a succession of provocative bills introduced in Congress by Senator Lewis Fields Linn, of Missouri, provided for the “reoccupation” of the country, establishment of military protection, and liberal land grant policies. The Democrats succeeded in electing James K. Polk to the Presidency in 1844 on a platform demanding exclusive U.S. control of the region, epitomized in the campaign slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight.” The Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846 compromised on the 49th parallel (Corning 33; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 184-93). Scott Duniway’s remembrance of the most aggressive American demand as historical fact could be simple carelessness, or something more. The Adams-Onís Treaty between the U.S. and Spain, which renounced any U.S. claim to Texas and fixed the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (1808-1847): born Prattsburg, New York; attended Emma Willard’s Female Seminary, Troy, New York, 1828, and Franklin Institute, 1831; in 1835, applied to American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the missionary arm of several major denominations, for assignment to western native tribes; following marriage to Marcus Whitman, February 18, 1836, came to Oregon, settling at Waiilatpu; engaged in missionary work until massacred, 1847; she and Eliza Hart Spalding were the first white women to cross the Rockies (Wilkins; Drury, First 1: 25-170; Corning 264). (1802-1847): gospel missionary and practicing physician, established mission among Cayuse natives at Waiilatpu, along Walla Walla River, 1836; amid increasingly strained relations, smallpox epidemic decimated natives, 1847, and led to massacre, on November 29, of Whitman, wife Narcissa, twelve others; fifty-three others held captive for some weeks; in retaliation, some nine hundred Willamette Valley settlers pursued those responsible across upper Columbia country for more than two years, 1847-50, with discouraging results, in Cayuse Indian War; five natives surrendered, were tried and hanged in Oregon City, spring, 1850 (Drury, Marcus Whitman; Drury, First 3: 279-88). Henry Harmon Spalding (1803-1874): born Bath, New York; converted to Christianity, 1822; entered Franklin Academy, 1825; attended and graduated, Western Reserve College, Ohio, 1831-33; married Eliza Hart, 1833; studied at Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, 1833-35; ordained and appointed missionary to Osage, but crossed continent with Whitmans, summer, 1836, establishing mission at Lapwai, where he printed first books in Oregon Country in Nez Perce language; following Whitman massacre, 1847, moved to Brownsville on Calapooya; returned periodically to Lapwai in years that followed, sometimes as Indian agent (Corning 229; Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding). Eliza Hart Spalding (1807-1851): born Berlin, Connecticut; married Henry Harmon Spalding at Trenton, New Jersey, Oct. 13, 1833; came to Oregon with Whitman party, 1836, one of first two white women to cross Rockies; taught Nez Perce Indian School at Lapwai, Idaho, 1836-47; following Whitman massacre, 1847, moved to Brownsville on Calapooya (Drury, “Spalding”; Corning 229; Drury, First 1: 173-233; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 318). Mary Augusta Dix Gray (1810-1881): born Ballston Spa, New York; married William Henry Gray, 1838; came by horseback to Oregon, arriving at Whitman mission near Walla Walla, August, 1838, to work among Nez Perce at Spalding mission at Lapwai; returned to Whitman mission at Waiilatpu, 1839-42, then moved to Willamette Valley; later moved to Clatsop Plains, where helped form first Presbyterian church in northwest, 1846; finally settled in Astoria (Drury, First 1: 237-69; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 110-11; cf. Carey, History 2: 560-62; Gaston, Centennial 3: 579-80; Gaston, Portland 3: 786-88; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 318). Scott Duniway is confusing William Gray’s initial journey in 1836 with the couple’s subsequent trip two years later. William Henry Gray (1810-1889): physician and lay missionary; born Farfield, New York; came to Oregon with Marcus Whitman and Henry Spalding, 1836; returned, married, in 1838; secular agent to Methodist Mission near Salem, 1842; helped form Provisional Government, 1843; member, Provisional legislature, 1845; farmed on Clatsop Plains, 1846-55; later entered sawmill business, then mining supplies; wrote A History of Oregon, 1792-1849, which is partisan and even intolerant, but interesting and helpful, 1864-70–blunt descriptions of the other members of the overland party appear esp. on 178-79 (Dobbs 93-97; Drury, First 3: 233-50). Mary A. Richardson Walker (1811-1897): born Baldwin, Maine; married Rev. Elkanah Walker (1805-1877), 1838; came to Oregon with the Grays, Eells, and Smiths as missionaries to Whitman’s mission at Waiilaptu, 1838; served at Tshimakain mission at Walker’s Prairie, 1839-48; lived at Fort Colville, 1848, moving to Willamette Valley in company of Oregon Volunteers after Whitman massacre; lived in Oregon City, 1848-49, helping organize Congregational Association there and Tualatin Academy (Pacific University) at Forest Grove; moved to Forest Grove to farm, 1849; seven children (Corning 256; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 109; Drury, Elkanah and Mary Walker; Drury, First 2: 21-44, 63-356, 3: 253-65; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 203). Myra Fairbanks Eells (1805-1878): born Massachusetts; married Rev. Cushing Eells (1810-1893), 1838; came to Oregon with Grays, Walkers, and Smiths as missionaries to Whitman’s mission at Waiilaptu, 1838; accompanied Walkers to Tshimakain mission until Whitman massacre of 1847, moving then to Willamette Valley; he taught at Oregon Institute, Salem, 1848, Tualatin Academy, Forest Grove, 1849-51, Washington Select School, 1851-57; they returned to Walla Walla area, 1862, promoting Whitman Seminary until 1869, when he resumed missionary work at Spokane; moved to Skokomish reservation on Puget Sound, 1872; two sons (Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 109-10; Drury, First 2: 47-121, 3: 291-304; Eells). Sarah Gilbert White Smith (1813-1855): married Asa Bowen Smith and came to Oregon with Grays, Eells, and Walkers, 1838; established mission at Kamiah, 1839; abandoned, 1841, and went to Sandwich Islands (Hawaii); returned to Massachusetts, 1846; he constructed vocabulary and grammar of Nez Perce language; “a delicate woman, unfitted for the trials of missionary life” (Bancroft, History of Oregon 137-38; Drury, First 1: 273-80, 3: 25-229). Elpha White Waller (1811-1881): born Rutledge county, Vermont; married Alvin F. Waller (1808-1872), 1832; started to Oregon from New York, October 1839, arriving via Cape Horn, June, 1840; he was ordained Methodist minister, stationed principally at Oregon City, helped build first Protestant church west of Rockies, c. 1843, then The Dalles, 1844, and Salem, 1847-57; he helped found Willamette University (Waller Hall being named for him) and Pacific Christian Advocate, 1853; three children (Corning 257; Oregon Native Son 2 (1900): 103; Lang 897; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 620; Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.). Mary A. Kinney Leslie (?-1841): of prominent Pierce family of New England; first wife of Methodist missionary David Leslie (1797-1869), one of two magistrates for country south of Columbia River, 1839, chair of committee that drafted code of laws for Oregon Country, 1841, and chaplain of first territorial legislature, 1849; came to Oregon around Cape Horn, 1837; worked missions at Salem and Oregon City; six children (Corning 146; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 426-27; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 452-53; Dobbs 60-63). Anna Maria Pittman Lee (1803-1838): Methodist missionary and first wife of Rev. Jason Lee (1803-1845); born New York City, daughter of George Washington and Mary Spies Pittman; left by sailing vessel for Oregon Mission on Willamette, 1837; her boat met by Rev. Lee at Fort Vancouver, May 17; married July 16, became first white bride in Oregon Country; with Lee on fundraising trip east, gave birth to first white child born in Oregon, June 23, 1838; baby lived only two days; she died one day later (Corning 144). Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband, H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16). The River of the West. Hartford: Bliss, 1870. This is the story of mountain man Joseph Lafayette Meek, who came west in 1828 as an employee of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, eventually settling in Oregon (seeCorning 164). All over Oregon and Washington. Observations on the Country, its Scenery, Soil, Climate, Resources, and Improvements… Hartford: Case, 1872. See “The Pacific Northwest” (the final sentence only can be found here).
“THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT AND TWO KINDS OF PROHIBITION” – October 5, 1914
Now just a month before the November election, Scott Duniway continues to speak out against a prohibition measure on the ballot.1 This is an autobiographical account of her awakening to the cause of equal rights and opposition to Prohibition. Again one sees the personal experiences that stimulated her concern for the economic condition of women. The […]
Now just a month before the November election, Scott Duniway continues to speak out against a prohibition measure on the ballot.1 This is an autobiographical account of her awakening to the cause of equal rights and opposition to Prohibition. Again one sees the personal experiences that stimulated her concern for the economic condition of women. The phrase “two kinds of prohibition” encapsulates her argument, repeated hundreds of times, that it was philosophically inconsistent for advocates of woman’s rights to oppose prohibitions on women’s activities but support prohibition of men’s (i.e., drinking). The text is taken from a heavily edited typescript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. According to her handwritten note at the beginning, this is a “stenographic report” of an address which Scott Duniway was to have delivered “at a mass meeting of citizens in Library Hall [Portland], October 5, from which she was detained by illness from attending in person.” Evidently, it was read in her absence, as the typescript itself is dated the following day, and identifies one D. A. Norton as reporter. Perhaps Scott Duniway then edited the address after its presentation. Most of this story is greatly embellished in the first sixty or so pages of Path Breaking, which itself was part of her unsuccessful campaign to defeat the measure.2 My attention was first directed to the Equal Suffrage Movement by learning through personal experience the legal financial handicap of the average married mother. I had been wooed and won by a young rancher, and taken from my school room to his Donation Land Claim, where I conscientiously attempted to perform the labors of a pioneer farmer’s wife and the duties attendant upon a rapidly increasingly family of many children. Many experiences occurred, one after another, that led me to see and understand the handicaps, financially speaking, of the mother who went from the school room, where she had her salary and could pay her expenses, to the home of a rancher who was improving a farm in the wilderness and employing many hired men,- men for whom I boiled and baked and stewed and fried and washed and scrubbed and sewed and patched and performed all the duties devolving upon what should have been the work of half a dozen women,- wearing out my bridal outfit and cutting up what was left of it to make clothes for the babies. I would probably have gone on to my death, as other women had done by hundreds of thousands, if it had not been for an accident that befell my husband, who was injured by a run-away team. This threw the entire support of the family upon myself. We moved from the farm to the village of LaFayette, in Yamhill County, where I engaged in the double tasks of teaching school and keeping boarders, doing all the work myself. I did not then learn the need of woman’s enfranchisement. My husband was not addicted to any bad habits, such as many women whom I knew were enduring, and I felt that I had no special cause for complaint. While assisting my husband to get a new farm and to begin anew, I was occupied by teaching school and keeping boarders, and I used to arise at three o’clock in the morning in Summer and at four o’clock in Winter, to do a day’s work in the kitchen for my family and boarders before beginning my school at nine o’clock. Yet, during all these efforts I did not learn that equal political and financial rights for married mothers could be a cure for the handicaps I had met. After I had saved up a little money I went into trade and began engaging in merchandising in Albany, in the interior of the State. While thus engaged I was brought into contact with very many women of the farms who were seeking better opportunities for their daughters than they themselves had met. One day a woman came to me in tears, and asked me to go with her to the Court House. I said, “The court house is a place for men.” But she was evidently in distress and I accompanied her. On our way to the halls of manmade laws she told me of her struggles since the death of her husband, to keep the family of daughters together, and raise and sell the produce of the farm to pay the yearly bills. By the time we had reached the court house I was thoroughly enthused with her troubles, and going to the Judge, whom I knew personally, I told him the woman’s story and was, of course, very indignant. I was, at that time, ignorant of the intricacies of the law and was politely told that, as I was a woman I did not know what I was talking about. But, I said, “We know enough to foot the bills, though!” The lady’s lawyer beckoned to us to come to his table and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “I guess you won’t have any more trouble with that Judge.” We didn’t. But, on the way back to the store the lady told me that if she was not compelled to administer on her husband’s estate, and employ a lawyer, she and the girls would have money enough every year to pay their bills. That was one lesson. Then I had others, many and varied, until at last I went one day to my home after a discouraging experience in the store with impecunious mothers and I said to my husband, who was ill, “One half of the women of this world are dolls, and the other half are drudges, and we are all fools.” And he said, “Don’t you see that it will never be different with women until they have the right to vote?” I said, “What good would that do?” And he said, “Why, women do fully half of the work of the world, besides bearing all the children, and can’t you see that they ought to have one half of the pay?” The truth dawned on me suddenly, and I began making preparations at once to move to Portland and start a newspaper, “The New North West,” which, with the aid of my family, I published for sixteen years, and reached all the best leading and thinking people of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, who became converts to Equal Rights for women through its teachings. Then, always having been interested in the temperance cause, a delegation of suffragists went with me to the State Temperance Alliance in Salem, where we were characterized by prohibitionists as “setting hens” and “belligerent females,” bent upon destroying the home, and we were not allowed to take our seats as delegates, although all classes of men, including those from the penitentiary, were given honored seats. I never was a success as a dodger, so I rose to my feet and moved to so amend the report of the Committee on Credentials as to seat the women. The Chairman said, “Take that crazy woman out of the house and take care of her.” The Sergeant at Arms came forward in the discharge of his duty, but he quailed before my uplifted pencil, and several men rushed into the aisle and began taking off their coats to defend me, when the Sergeant at Arms considered discretion the better part of valor and retreated in as good order as was possible under the circumstances. The next year, when we met at the Alliance, the organization of Prohibition was so complete that it took a running fight of two days to get the Suffrage delegation admitted, causing the Alliance to secede, and finally die of inanition. The so-called Liquor Traffic had, previous to that time, made no objection to the enfranchisement of women. If often furnished halls, free of charge, for my meetings because the churches were closed against women speakers almost everywhere. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. It was often a saloon man who enabled me to get a hall for a hearing, and I soon got such a start in favor of equal rights for women that the churches found it impossible to crush the movement. So they seized it as their Shibboleth, and began at last, to demand votes for women, “as a short-cut to Prohibition.” Seeing, at once, the effect of this reflex action against the cause of liberty, and realizing the creation of a new force of enemies in the liquor business that had formerly been the friends of the movement, I began to analyze Prohibition itself, and proceeded to turn all the powers of my paper, my pen and my platform work to an attempt to neutralize the two antagonistic forces of prohibition of the Liquor Traffic and Prohibition of Women’s Right to Vote. For a number of succeeding years the W.C.T.U. and the Liquor Traffic joined in waging a warfare between the two kinds of Prohibition just cited, although the W.C.T.U. was too blind to see the combination. Finding it impossible to teach fanaticism any commonsense, I began, very cautiously, to convince the liquor buyers and liquor sellers, who had votes (and women didn’t) that the movement for equal rights for the mother sex was not intended as a movement against the liberties of anybody, but was intended to establish equal rights for everybody, by no means excluding the mother sex. It took a long time and much quiet effort to remove the barrier of Prohibition against equal rights for the mother sex from the majority of the people who had votes, but I persevered. I subscribed for the Liquor Journals, to see what they had to say about the subject. For a long time I did not dare to write to one of them, but I would simply watch the newspaper clippings, and whatever I saw, bearing upon my view of the situation I would send unannounced to the Liquor Journals. Finally, when election day came, on November 5th, 1912, the “liquor element,” buyers and sellers,- I put them all together, you know,- called off their dogs and allowed the women to get the majority vote. Then came amongst us a horde of irresponsible agitators, claiming women suffrage as their weapon, and exciting a reign of despotism, which sent me to the Bible to sustain my attitude and argument, and drove Prohibitionists back to their original slander, accusing me of “selling out to the Liquor Traffic”! But, I did not flinch, and I want you all to know that I am still in business at the old stand, fighting for liberty for all the people, “by no means,” to quote Abraham Lincoln, “By no means excluding the women.” I charge that these latter day invading agitators who are preaching prohibition and passing the hat for money are acting in direct violation of the Holy Scriptures, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. It has gone so far that the President of the United States<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-woman-suffrage-movement-and-two-kinds-of-prohibition%e2%80%9d-october-5-1914/#footnote_3_121" id="identifier_3_121" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924): Twenty-eighth President; born Staunton, Virginia; educated College of New Jersey (Princeton), University of Virginia Law School, and Johns Hopkins (doctorate), embarking on academic career in political science; married Ellen Louise Axson, 1885; president, Princeton University, 1902; elected governor, New Jersey, 1910; elected President, 1912, receiving only forty-two percent of popular vote in three-way race, but large electoral majority; championed lower tariffs, graduated income tax, Federal Reserve, antitrust, protections against child labor, eight-hour day for railroad workers; narrowly re-elected, 1916; following armistice, 1918, campaigned for Versailles Treaty, containing Covenant of League of Nations, which failed in the Senate by seven votes; nearly died of campaign-induced stroke; nursed by second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, until death (“Woodrow Wilson“).">3 cannot possibly accept our demand for the full and free enfranchisement of all women, because he would then have to meet the demands of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for Nation Wide Prohibition. The President of the United States, no matter to what party he may belong, is brought into daily association with European, Asiatic, African and Australian powers, which compel him to so far neutralize the clamor of idealists and cranks as to protect and preserve, as far as possible, our friendly relations with the nations of the world. I do not say this as a Republican, as a Democrat, as a Socialist or as a Prohibitionist or Progressive, but as a patriot. I desire, above all things, to see the ship of State so steadily guided and so intelligently controlled, that, although I am in my eightieth year, I hope to live to see the day when “Swords may be beaten into plow-shares and spears into pruning hooks, and nations may learn war no more.” When that day dawns, the wife of the drunkard will have begun to assert her inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on her own account, and will be able to rise above marrying an inebriate, or raising a drunkard, or creating a soldier to be butchered in war. The pseudo-emotionalism of half-baked theorists seems cheap indeed as compared with the larger questions that surround our planet, will surely, as civilization advances and liberty and knowledge increase, overspread the round globe with the practice of the Golden Rule, which is destined to establish the prosperity, enterprise, sobriety and happiness of all the people. Let the majority of the mother sex become enfranchised citizens. Let them rise above the handicap of servitude without wages that now enslaves so many of the women in the home, over whom the orthodox churches are shedding tears, and the equalization of economic forces will be speedily adjusted to right conditions, and render both the occasional intemperance of husbands, and the money-making schemes of the Prohibitionists alike obsolete. NOTES As she had earlier at a Progressive Party luncheon. Moynihan, Rebel 218. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924): Twenty-eighth President; born Staunton, Virginia; educated College of New Jersey (Princeton), University of Virginia Law School, and Johns Hopkins (doctorate), embarking on academic career in political science; married Ellen Louise Axson, 1885; president, Princeton University, 1902; elected governor, New Jersey, 1910; elected President, 1912, receiving only forty-two percent of popular vote in three-way race, but large electoral majority; championed lower tariffs, graduated income tax, Federal Reserve, antitrust, protections against child labor, eight-hour day for railroad workers; narrowly re-elected, 1916; following armistice, 1918, campaigned for Versailles Treaty, containing Covenant of League of Nations, which failed in the Senate by seven votes; nearly died of campaign-induced stroke; nursed by second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, until death (“Woodrow Wilson“).
By Labor Day, 1914, Americans had been honoring working men and women with a national holiday on the first Monday of September for twenty years.1 According to one historian, “a growing consensus that the government must do more to correct the evils of industrial capitalism” was emerging. Yet, while gains had been made, this remained […]
By Labor Day, 1914, Americans had been honoring working men and women with a national holiday on the first Monday of September for twenty years.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_1_119" id="identifier_1_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Labor historian Philip Foner asserts that Labor Day was observed first and informally in 1885; Oregon became the first state to make it an official holiday in 1887; and it became a national legal holiday in 1894 (First Facts 92). However, reporting on the events of this day, the Morning Oregonian claims that the Knights of Labor first held a parade in New York in 1882; the Knights settled on the first Monday in September in 1884; Colorado was the first state to declare it a holiday, in 1887; and it is celebrated in every state and territory except Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming, while in Louisiana it is celebrated only in New Orleans parish (7 Sept. 1914; cf. Corning 138).">1 According to one historian, “a growing consensus that the government must do more to correct the evils of industrial capitalism” was emerging. Yet, while gains had been made, this remained a tumultuous time for the labor movement, its future far from certain. In Woodrow Wilson, labor had a modest friend in the White House and other allies (such as Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan) in the Administration. The nation’s first Secretary of Labor, former mine worker William Wilson, had begun to attempt to mediate worker grievances against employers. In June, Representative Henry De Lamar Clayton, a Democrat from Alabama, had introduced a bill declaring that “the labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce,” guaranteeing the right of trade unions to exist, legalizing peaceful picketing, boycotts, and strikes, limiting the use of injunctions against striking workers, and providing for jury trials in criminal contempt cases; Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor hailed it (too optimistically) as labor’s “Magna Carta.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_2_119" id="identifier_2_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The A.F. of L. tepidly endorsed Wilson over Roosevelt and Taft in 1912 and, after the election, the President consulted frequently with Gompers about matters of policy and legislation. The Department of Labor was created in March, 1913. Unions had been fighting for twenty years to stop judicial harassment under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, under which they frequently were prosecuted as illegal restraints of trade, and current injunction legislation. Clayton’s bill passed the Senate on September 3, just four days before this speech; the Clayton Antitrust Act would become law on October 15. While its gains were important, only “lawful” activities were protected, language which provided the basis for subsequent judicial interpretations that rendered the protections themselves virtually meaningless (Greene 242-48; Foner, First Facts 51; Morning Oregonian 3 Sept. 1914).">2 Nonetheless, appalling working conditions and “wage slavery” could be found in industry after industry across the country. Many more radical and socialist elements, disenchanted with Gompers’ conservative Federation, had formed the International Workers of the World, under whose banner the often-deadly work of organizing was on-going. Textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts (almost half of whom were women and young girls), demanding “bread and roses, too,” struck in 1912, with as many as 20,000 laborers at a time on the picket line. A year later, 25,000 silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey, struck for twenty-two weeks, until they were, by one account, “starved into submission.” The first effort to organize California migrant agricultural workers occurred near Marysville later in 1913 in the so-called “Wheatland Hop-Fields Riot,” in which a district attorney, a deputy sheriff, and two hop-pickers were killed. In January, 1914, Henry Ford, probably in an effort to thwart I.W.W. organizing, announced an unheard-of wage-and-hour scale of five dollars and eight hours a day. Then, in April–five months before this Labor Day–during a United Mine Workers’ strike, Colorado militia strafed a strikers’ tent camp with machine-gun fire and torched the tents with people still inside. Thirty-nine men, women, and children were killed in the “Ludlow Massacre”3 If conditions for most American workers were tenuous, the lot of women workers was worse.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_4_119" id="identifier_4_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="According to data presented at the 1907 Chicago Industrial Exhibit, sponsored by Jane Addams of Hull House and the Women’s Trade Union League of Chicago, female workers were earning an average of only $7.25 per week, and many as little as $3.00 (Foner, First Facts 209).">4 And then there was that vast category of women–housewives–whose work was not even recognized as “work” and went uncompensated. Scott Duniway long had been concerned about women’s economic security, so it was natural for her to revisit the issue on this day “dedicated to the toilers of the Nation.” Portland’s stores were closed and “a day filled with excitement and interest every minute” was planned. Concerts, vaudeville, and a variety of athletic and other contests, with $1,200 in prizes donated by the city’s merchants, would make for “merriment on foot in the city parks.” The main program unfolded at the Oaks Amusement Park, where “foremost in interest in the competitions” was the “better baby contest” that opened the day’s celebration. Sponsored by the Central Labor Council and the Portland Eugenic Society, six valuable prizes were awarded to the “youngsters coming the nearest to eugenic standards,” with nary a dimple swaying the judges in this “strictly scientific test.” Next came an address on “The Progress of Labor,” by attorney William A. Munly.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_5_119" id="identifier_5_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1863-?): born Carbondale, Pennsylvania; graduated public high school, 1878; principal, school at Olyphant, Pennsylvania, 1881-83, after which removed to Oregon; city editor, Portland Daily Standard, 1885; married Elizabeth B. Buckenmeyer, 1891; studied law with Attorney General George Earle Chamberlain; admitted to bar, 1894; private secretary, Governor Sylvester Pennoyer, 1887-95; assistant postmaster, Portland, 1896-98; U.S. Attorney, Third Dist., Alaska Territory, 1917-21; Democrat (History of the Bench 196; “Political Graveyard“).">5 Then, just after noon, in the Oaks auditorium, Scott Duniway took the stage.6 In the retrospective manner that typifies her later speech-making, Abigail speaks from her experience as a young wife forced to support her family after husband Ben sustained his crippling injury. What we call the Protestant ethic plays an important part in her thinking. Her praise of the “wage-earning, tax-paying” class, and disdain for the moneyed class, does not turn on innate differences in character, but on the transformative (perhaps even “redemptive” is not too strong, or too heavily religious, a term) power of labor, which is accessible to all people. Her story of a woman “who lived in an elegant residence on the hill, spending her days in luxury and her evenings in revelry,” is telling. Initially, Abigail’s scorn for this “little bundle of pink and white tyranny” is unbounded. However, scorn gives way to approval and even admiration when this “frivolous” woman, facing financial disaster, “arise[s] in the majesty of a new sensation” and starts a business. This story corroborates Scott Duniway’s own; the moral of both is that responsibility advances human character. Ultimately, this is the ground in which her justification for woman’s rights is rooted: Character so developed has earned the blessings of liberty. This is why Scott Duniway believes that the West, and particularly the Pacific Northwest, is especially fertile soil for the seeds of equality: The pioneer experience of her people, both men and women, has molded their characters and earned them their freedom. This is why equal rights are inevitable: The advancement of human character is a natural part of evolutionary progress. This is why she prefers not to antagonize men: Appealing to their noblest instincts invokes the most advanced aspects of their characters and should, according to this implicit rhetorical theory, be most persuasive. Finally, this is why she (like a number of other woman’s rights advocates) sometimes deviated from a strict “natural rights” defense of equal suffrage and supported something less than universal suffrage: The franchise was not an inherent right of humans qua humans, but a right to be earned.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_7_119" id="identifier_7_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="As early as 1881, Abigail opined against unqualified suffrage and in favor of “intelligent and moral qualifications” for voters. This fomented yet another disagreement with Dr. Mary Anna Cooke Thompson, who argued that no qualifications should be put on women while there are none on men, that full franchise should be granted first and reasonable qualifications designed by both sexes second. This disagreement underscores the magnitude of the 1910 “tax-paying women” proposal’s compromise of principle (Morning Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881; Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881).">7 In short, the core of Scott Duniway’s rhetorical strategy, although adapted to political realities as she interpreted them, was not simply a product of political expediency, but was grounded in genuine conviction borne of her life experience. However, heavy reliance on this experience has a cost. Throughout most of her career, Abigail the journalist intimately engaged current events, readily offering her views on financial panics, the gold standard, capital accumulation, and other timely matters.8 This speech’s silence about recent labor strife, government policy, and other contemporary subjects is stunning, particularly since the occasion begs at least for their acknowledgment, if not exposition. A population explosion in Portland and statewide since the turn of the century had made fear of “rootless immigrants and unemployed laborers” swayed by the I.W.W. “rampant.”9 Only three weeks before this Labor Day, the Federal Industrial Relations Commission–created by Congress in 1912 to investigate “widespread industrial strife and discontent”–arrived in Portland for three days of public hearings.10 That August, Portlanders opened their morning newspapers to find that: trouble still brewed in the hopfields of California, where the I.W.W. possessed “several tons of dynamite” and was “planning big trouble”; self-described “revolutionist” James Thompson of the I.W.W. advocated abolishing the “wage system” in testimony before the Commission in Seattle; Frank Walsh, chair of the Commission, found unrest and sympathy for the I.W.W. greater in the Pacific Northwest than anywhere else in the country; the United Mine Workers canceled an unsuccessful strike in Vancouver, B.C., after fifteen months and more than one million dollars; and even city newsboys were threatening to strike.11 Most alarming of all, riots broke out when a thousand “insurgent” copper miners in Butte, Montana, tried to force other miners to join their new, I.W.W.-inspired union; when rumors reached the camp that the state militia would be called out, the miners threatened to burn the city to the ground; martial law was imposed, the local newspapers were censored, a summary military court superceded civilian rule (seven I.W.W. members were the first to be tried), and a manhunt for the president of the renegade union–wanted on “inciting to riot” charges–commenced. Thus, on the very day that Scott Duniway spoke, Gatling guns guarded the county courthouse in Butte and militiamen patrolled its streets. It was thought that the military would remain at least until after the November elections (at which, incidentally, Oregonians would be voting on a proposal for a universal eight-hour work day). The war in Europe notwithstanding, surely many a lively conversation in the homes and establishments of Portland must have concerned the news from Montana.12 Yet Abigail ignores these events and abandons deliberation entirely, striving only to evoke a sense of the virtue of work, particularly women’s work. The risk is that her message becomes inspiring but irrelevant. The only hint of current events is her choice of verse. Abigail commonly utilized poetry (her own or others’) to reinforce a message. But this address relies unusually heavily on this device, quoting no fewer than four: Rose Elizabeth Smith’s “Ninety and Nine,” Joaquin Miller’s “The Bravest Battle,” Charles Swain’s “Home’s Not Merely Four Square Walls,” and Mary Howitt’s “The Clock is on the Stroke of Six.” They are worlds apart, and Scott Duniway’s attempt to meld a Wobbly organizing anthem with cloyingly sentimental paeans to home and hearth is truly extraordinary.13 The risk is that her inspirational message becomes, upon scrutiny, simply incoherent. The text is taken from a manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers, consisting of a letter to the editor, dated September 22, 1914, and beginning: “Some friends, seeing the splendid address of my friend, Col. C. E. S. Wood<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_14_119" id="identifier_14_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852-1944): lawyer, poet, philosophical anarchist; born Erie, Pennsylvania; graduated West Point, 1874; participated in Nez Perce campaign of 1877 (Chief Joseph), and Bannock and Piute campaign of 1878, reaching the rank of First Lieutenant; admitted to bar in Washington Territory, 1879; Columbia University law graduate, 1883; resigned from Army and admitted to Oregon bar, 1884; although married, became companion of Sarah Bard Field, the two moving to San Francisco after passage of Nineteenth Amendment, 1920; entertained artists and intellectuals in salon atmosphere in their home, “The Cats”; they married January 20, 1936, following Wood’s wife’s death (Corning 273; History of the Bench 250; Field; Powers 441-52).">14, in your valuable columns, as he gave it to the public on Labor Day, having asked me to send my speech to you, I have consulted my notes, and with your permission will submit the same to your readers.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_15_119" id="identifier_15_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Wood spoke immediately after Scott Duniway. The Oregonian reported Wood’s speech the following morning (September 8). It declined to publish Abigail’s letter. Wood also testified during the U.S. Industrial Relations Commission hearing in Portland on the subject of Oregon’s minimum wage law, where he described himself as an “anarchist” (Morning Oregonian 22 Aug. 1914).">15 I said, substantially,” Mr. Chairman and friends of the Federation of Labor: I wish to say, before beginning the subject of “Home and Mothers,” as advertised for this important occasion, that, as a laborer myself, born and brought up in the labor element, I have always felt the deepest interest in every movement for bettering the conditions of “The ninety and nine who live and die That one may rend in luxury And be wrapped in its silken fold. The one in a mansion rich and are, The ninety and nine in hovels bare.” But, so rapidly are the conditions of the laboring people improving through the organizations that have come together on this historic occasion that I love to be able to add, in the words of the poet just quoted, that “The night, so dreary and dark and long At last shall the morning bring, And over the land the visitor’s song Of the ninety and nine shall ring, And echo afar, from zone to zone, Rejoice, for labor shall have its own.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_16_119" id="identifier_16_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Roughly, the first and third verses of Rose Elizabeth Smith’s “The Ninety and Nine,” which reworks–for labor organizing purposes–an earlier hymn of the same name (words by Elizabeth C. Clephane, 1868, music by Ira David Sankey, 1874) based on Matthew 18.13: “He rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.” It was incorporated into the I.W.W.’s legendary Little Red Song Book, compiled “To Fan the Flames of Discontent” (first printed in 1909), circa 1916. The complete lyrics are: There are ninety and nine that work and die, In hunger and want and cold, That one may revel in luxury, And be lapped in the silken fold. And ninety and nine in their hovels bare, |: And one in a palace of riches rare. :| From the sweat of their brow the desert blooms And the forest before them falls; Their labor has builded able homes, And cities with lofty halls; And the one owns cities and houses and lands |: And the ninety and nine have empty hands. :| But the night so dreary and dark and long, At last shall the morning bring; And over the land the victor’s song Of the ninety and nine shall ring, And echo afar, from zone to zone, |: Rejoice! for Labor shall have its own. :| “Ninety and Nine“; “The Ninety and Nine“; “I.W.W. Little Red Song Book“; Foner, History 4: 152.">16 We all know there is no excellence without labor; and everybody ought to know that the most important and poorest paid of all the labor of earth is that of the home, where ‘The mother who treads the old kitchen floor’ has been immortalized in the words of Oregon’s greatest laborer and warrior poet, in his eulogy upon the mothers of men.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_17_119" id="identifier_17_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller’s “The Bravest Battle” (198). It was one of Scott Duniway’s favorites; see also “Woman in Oregon History” and “How to Win the Ballot.” Her rendition diverges in both minor and notable ways; the latter are identified in subsequent notes.">17 “The greatest18 battle that ever was fought! Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not, T’was fought by the mothers of men. Nay, not with cannon or battle shot With sword or nobler pen! Nay, not with eloquent words or thought From mouths of wonderful men; But, deep in a walled up woman’s heart Of woman who19 would not yield, But bravely and20 silently bore her part So, there is her battle field21. No marshaling troop, no bivouac song, No banners22 to gleam and wave But23, oh, those battles, they last so long, From babyhood to the grave! — O, ye with banners and battle shot And soldiers to shout and praise I tell you the kingliest battles fought Are fought in these silent ways<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_24_119" id="identifier_24_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The final four lines do not appear in Miller, whose final stanza is, instead, the much gloomier: “Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars, She fights in her walled-up town– Fights on and on in the endless wars, Then silent, unseen–goes down.”">24. More and more, as civilization advances and the people grow in knowledge and understanding, does the public interest grow in recognition of the all-important work that centers in the environment surrounding Home and Mother. And yet, all important as is the mighty mission of the mother who treads the kitchen floor–the mother of the wage earner’s home, who boils and bakes and stews and fries, who washes, scrubs, and washes dishes; who makes and mends the children’s clothes, and cares for all her household’s needs, in sickness and in health, her work has, until very recently, received no adequate recognition or recompense as the world’s greatest asset. I am not blaming men for this tardiness of recognition of the importance of woman’s work. “Give her of the fruit of her hands,” said Solomon “and let her own works praise her in the gates.” Women are waging no war against men. We all like men a great deal better than we like women; and wise women are not sorry who knows it. Show me a woman who doesn’t like men, and I will show you a sour-souled, vinegar-visaged woman, who owes an apology to the world for living in it at all; and the very best thing she could do for her country would be to steal away and die, somewhere, in the company of the man that doesn’t like women! In early times the women did the manufacturing of food and clothing in the home. They sheared the sheep, they washed the wool, they spun and wove and dyed the cloth, they made the clothes, they knit the hosiery and made the underwear by hand. They milked the cows, churned the butter, made the cheese, and did a thousand other things now done in factories, putting double burdens on the shoulders of men, and driving women away from home to follow the work and wages without which many a mother could not afford a home; and many a father, needing the allurements that the home of the mother, working outside the home, could no long[er] keep bright and cheerful, would be tempted to seek amusement elsewhere, much to his detriment and, after depriving both home and mother of his companionship without which there is no good living anywhere. “Home’s not merely four square walls, Though with pictures hung and gilded; Home is where affection calls, Filled with shrines the heart hath builded. Home’s not merely roof and room; It needs something to endear it; Home is where the heart can bloom, Where there’s kindly words to cheer it.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_25_119" id="identifier_25_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A condensed version (the first four lines of the first verse, followed by the first four lines of the second) of “Home’s Not Merely Four Square Walls,” (a.k.a., “Where Home Is”), by Charles Swain (1801[1803?]-1874), minor English poet & song-writer. Later included in The Book of a Thousand Songs, ed. Albert E. Wier (New York: Carl Fischer, 1918).">25 In this new dispensation which has driven so many women away from the home to assist in earning a livelihood, the burden often falls too heavily upon the husband; and the wife becomes a burden too grievous to be borne. I have known a frivolous woman, a little bundle of pink and white tyranny, who lived in an elegant residence on the hill, spending her days in luxury and her evenings in revelry, while her husband was occupied, often into the wee small hours of the morning, in a little railed off office called a counting room, trying to create an agreement between his ledger and trial balance. The walls of his down town warehouse were lined with great stacks of rusty bacon on one side and great stacks of rusty26 salt sacks on the other; and he, growing more and more bent and wrinkled and old, came to a day when he could no longer shun an army of creditors or the warrants of the sheriff; but, while he could hold up his head and face the officers of the law, he trembled with fear at the thought of facing that little specimen of pink and white tyranny on the hill and confessing that he was bankrupt. But I have seen that wife, when the real situation was explained to her, arise in the majesty of a new sensation; and suddenly realizing that man’s extremity was woman’s opportunity, I have seen that woman become the stay and support of her husband in his misfortune and become the helpmeet she would always have been if she had been allowed to be his business counselor from the beginning. I have seen that woman, after the smoke of financial disaster had blown away, go to a friend and secure a loan, and by engaging in a little business, like a boarding-house, or a notion store, enable her husband to again hold up his head before the world and gradually regain the credit he had lost. Men cannot afford to take these double burdens on their own shoulders. Their wives should be their business partners, subject to such regulations of their business affairs, before and after marriage, as are settled amicably between and men when forming their copartnerships for life; or, if they agree to disagree there should always be a way for equitable adjustment of their affairs on a basis of equality of rights. It is a matter of great consolation to the mothers of the land to note the progress already made in this direction. Instead of the husband and wife being one, and that one always the husband only, the two are being recognized gradually as a united head, where the husband and wife are one, and that one both of them. When that state of affairs shall have become universal in the homes of the wage earning classes everywhere the dream of the poet will not be an exceptional one. Think of the blessed lot of the working mother, in the cottage home of the laboring man where the toiling mother can sing “The clock is on the stroke of six, The father’s work is done Heap up the coals and stir the fire And put the kettle on. The hearth is swept, the fire is bright, The clock ticks listlessly, The cloth is spread the lamps are light, The hot cakes smoke in napkins white And now I wait for thee! Come home, come, thy task is done The kettle sings for thee. The blinds are shut, the curtains down, The armchair to the fireside drawn, The boy is on my knee. Thy task is done, we miss thee here, Wheree’r thy footsteps roam; No hand can spread such kindly cheer, No beating heart, no listening ear Like those which wait thee home! Aha: Along the crisp walk fast That well known step doth come, The bolt is drawn the gate is part, The babe is wild with joy at last, A thousand welcomes home!<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chome-and-mother%e2%80%9d-september-7-1914/#footnote_27_119" id="identifier_27_119" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Loosely based on “The Clock is on the Stroke of Six,” by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), English poet, Quaker, and reformer, better known for “The Spider and the Fly.” The first version was published in 1829: The clock is on the stroke of six, The Father’s work is done; Sweep up the hearth and mend the fire, And put the kettle on. The wild night is blowing cold, `Tis dreary crossing o’er the wold. He’s crossing o’er the wold apace, He is stronger than the storm; He does not feel the cold, not he, His heart it is so warm, For Father’s heart is stout and true As ever human bosom knew. He makes all toil, all hardship, light: Would all men were the same! So ready to be pleased, so kind, So very slow to blame! Folks need not be unkind, austere, For love hath readier will than fear. Nay, do not close the shutters, child; For far along the lane The little window looks and he Can see it shining plain. I’ve heard him say he loves to mark The cheerful firelight through the dark. And we’ll do all that Father likes; His wishes are so few. Would they were more that every hour Some wish of his I knew! I’m sure it makes a happy day When I can please him any way. I know he’s coming by this sign, That baby’s almost wild; See how he laughs and crows and stares- Heaven bless the merry child! He’s father’s self in form and limb, And father’s heart is strong in him. Hark! Hark! I hear his footsteps now; He’s through the garden gate, Run, little Bess, and ope the door, And do not let him wait. Shout, baby, shout! and clap thy hands, For Father on the threshold stands. A slightly different version, retitled “The Father’s Coming,” and set to music by George Frederick Root (1820-1895), appeared in 1852. Although I am not certain, the similarity of these versions, and their substantial differences from Scott Duniway’s version, suggest that Abigail has exercised considerable poetic license here, rather than merely quoting yet a third popular rendering. In any case, it is extremely interesting that the other versions are paeans to Father, in which Mother is utterly self-effacing (“I’m sure it makes a happy day/When I can please him any way”), while, in Scott Duniway’s version, praise be to Mother, who makes home so hospitable.">27 How much the working women of the home are owing to the Federation of Labor for the growing advantages that are constantly accruing to them under these progressive conditions, the world is slow to acknowledge. But many thousands do know and [are] acknowledging these advantages already; and the mothers in the homes are signing new songs in their hearts as their cherished babies get prizes at our many fairs, and their proud husbands get ready to step with them in time and time to the sweet songs of liberty as they toil together for the benefit of home and children, each working for the good of all, and all for every one. I thank you. NOTES Labor historian Philip Foner asserts that Labor Day was observed first and informally in 1885; Oregon became the first state to make it an official holiday in 1887; and it became a national legal holiday in 1894 (First Facts 92). However, reporting on the events of this day, the Morning Oregonian claims that the Knights of Labor first held a parade in New York in 1882; the Knights settled on the first Monday in September in 1884; Colorado was the first state to declare it a holiday, in 1887; and it is celebrated in every state and territory except Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming, while in Louisiana it is celebrated only in New Orleans parish (7 Sept. 1914; cf. Corning 138). The A.F. of L. tepidly endorsed Wilson over Roosevelt and Taft in 1912 and, after the election, the President consulted frequently with Gompers about matters of policy and legislation. The Department of Labor was created in March, 1913. Unions had been fighting for twenty years to stop judicial harassment under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, under which they frequently were prosecuted as illegal restraints of trade, and current injunction legislation. Clayton’s bill passed the Senate on September 3, just four days before this speech; the Clayton Antitrust Act would become law on October 15. While its gains were important, only “lawful” activities were protected, language which provided the basis for subsequent judicial interpretations that rendered the protections themselves virtually meaningless (Greene 242-48; Foner, First Facts 51; Morning Oregonian 3 Sept. 1914). See, respectively: Foner, History 4: 306-28, 351-72, 261-80; Foner, First Facts 117-18, 116). According to data presented at the 1907 Chicago Industrial Exhibit, sponsored by Jane Addams of Hull House and the Women’s Trade Union League of Chicago, female workers were earning an average of only $7.25 per week, and many as little as $3.00 (Foner, First Facts 209). (1863-?): born Carbondale, Pennsylvania; graduated public high school, 1878; principal, school at Olyphant, Pennsylvania, 1881-83, after which removed to Oregon; city editor, Portland Daily Standard, 1885; married Elizabeth B. Buckenmeyer, 1891; studied law with Attorney General George Earle Chamberlain; admitted to bar, 1894; private secretary, Governor Sylvester Pennoyer, 1887-95; assistant postmaster, Portland, 1896-98; U.S. Attorney, Third Dist., Alaska Territory, 1917-21; Democrat (History of the Bench 196; “Political Graveyard“). Morning Oregonian 7 Sept. 1914. Abigail alludes to the eugenics competition in this speech’s concluding paragraph. As early as 1881, Abigail opined against unqualified suffrage and in favor of “intelligent and moral qualifications” for voters. This fomented yet another disagreement with Dr. Mary Anna Cooke Thompson, who argued that no qualifications should be put on women while there are none on men, that full franchise should be granted first and reasonable qualifications designed by both sexes second. This disagreement underscores the magnitude of the 1910 “tax-paying women” proposal’s compromise of principle (Morning Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881; Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881). On the topic of labor, perhaps the best example is her “Avoid the Cause of Strikes,” now lost but delivered during the turmoil of 1893-94. Moynihan, Rebel 218. Morning Oregonian 17 Aug. 1914. Respectively: Morning Oregonian 6, 13, 20, 21, and 12 Aug. 1914. The Morning Oregonian first reported trouble in Montana on August 9; after the first miner was killed, it covered the story every day from August 27 through Labor Day, 1914. Even though her version of Howitt’s poem is markedly less sentimental than the original (infra, n. 27). Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852-1944): lawyer, poet, philosophical anarchist; born Erie, Pennsylvania; graduated West Point, 1874; participated in Nez Perce campaign of 1877 (Chief Joseph), and Bannock and Piute campaign of 1878, reaching the rank of First Lieutenant; admitted to bar in Washington Territory, 1879; Columbia University law graduate, 1883; resigned from Army and admitted to Oregon bar, 1884; although married, became companion of Sarah Bard Field, the two moving to San Francisco after passage of Nineteenth Amendment, 1920; entertained artists and intellectuals in salon atmosphere in their home, “The Cats”; they married January 20, 1936, following Wood’s wife’s death (Corning 273; History of the Bench 250; Field; Powers 441-52). Wood spoke immediately after Scott Duniway. The Oregonian reported Wood’s speech the following morning (September 8). It declined to publish Abigail’s letter. Wood also testified during the U.S. Industrial Relations Commission hearing in Portland on the subject of Oregon’s minimum wage law, where he described himself as an “anarchist” (Morning Oregonian 22 Aug. 1914). Roughly, the first and third verses of Rose Elizabeth Smith’s “The Ninety and Nine,” which reworks–for labor organizing purposes–an earlier hymn of the same name (words by Elizabeth C. Clephane, 1868, music by Ira David Sankey, 1874) based on Matthew 18.13: “He rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.” It was incorporated into the I.W.W.’s legendary Little Red Song Book, compiled “To Fan the Flames of Discontent” (first printed in 1909), circa 1916. The complete lyrics are: There are ninety and nine that work and die, In hunger and want and cold, That one may revel in luxury, And be lapped in the silken fold. And ninety and nine in their hovels bare, |: And one in a palace of riches rare. :| From the sweat of their brow the desert blooms And the forest before them falls; Their labor has builded able homes, And cities with lofty halls; And the one owns cities and houses and lands |: And the ninety and nine have empty hands. :| But the night so dreary and dark and long, At last shall the morning bring; And over the land the victor’s song Of the ninety and nine shall ring, And echo afar, from zone to zone, |: Rejoice! for Labor shall have its own. :| “Ninety and Nine“; “The Ninety and Nine“; “I.W.W. Little Red Song Book“; Foner, History 4: 152. Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller’s “The Bravest Battle” (198). It was one of Scott Duniway’s favorites; see also “Woman in Oregon History” and “How to Win the Ballot.” Her rendition diverges in both minor and notable ways; the latter are identified in subsequent notes. Miller: “bravest” Miller: “that” Miller: “patiently, silently” Miller: “Lo! there in that battlefield.” Miller: “banner” Miller: “And” The final four lines do not appear in Miller, whose final stanza is, instead, the much gloomier: “Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars, She fights in her walled-up town– Fights on and on in the endless wars, Then silent, unseen–goes down.” A condensed version (the first four lines of the first verse, followed by the first four lines of the second) of “Home’s Not Merely Four Square Walls,” (a.k.a., “Where Home Is”), by Charles Swain (1801[1803?]-1874), minor English poet & song-writer. Later included in The Book of a Thousand Songs, ed. Albert E. Wier (New York: Carl Fischer, 1918). Her handwriting is very difficult here. The best choice seems to be a play on two senses of “rusty”: meaning reasty or rancid in the first instance and alluding to the corrosive qualities of salt in the second. Loosely based on “The Clock is on the Stroke of Six,” by Mary Howitt (1799-1888), English poet, Quaker, and reformer, better known for “The Spider and the Fly.” The first version was published in 1829: The clock is on the stroke of six, The Father’s work is done; Sweep up the hearth and mend the fire, And put the kettle on. The wild night is blowing cold, `Tis dreary crossing o’er the wold. He’s crossing o’er the wold apace, He is stronger than the storm; He does not feel the cold, not he, His heart it is so warm, For Father’s heart is stout and true As ever human bosom knew. He makes all toil, all hardship, light: Would all men were the same! So ready to be pleased, so kind, So very slow to blame! Folks need not be unkind, austere, For love hath readier will than fear. Nay, do not close the shutters, child; For far along the lane The little window looks and he Can see it shining plain. I’ve heard him say he loves to mark The cheerful firelight through the dark. And we’ll do all that Father likes; His wishes are so few. Would they were more that every hour Some wish of his I knew! I’m sure it makes a happy day When I can please him any way. I know he’s coming by this sign, That baby’s almost wild; See how he laughs and crows and stares- Heaven bless the merry child! He’s father’s self in form and limb, And father’s heart is strong in him. Hark! Hark! I hear his footsteps now; He’s through the garden gate, Run, little Bess, and ope the door, And do not let him wait. Shout, baby, shout! and clap thy hands, For Father on the threshold stands. A slightly different version, retitled “The Father’s Coming,” and set to music by George Frederick Root (1820-1895), appeared in 1852. Although I am not certain, the similarity of these versions, and their substantial differences from Scott Duniway’s version, suggest that Abigail has exercised considerable poetic license here, rather than merely quoting yet a third popular rendering. In any case, it is extremely interesting that the other versions are paeans to Father, in which Mother is utterly self-effacing (“I’m sure it makes a happy day/When I can please him any way”), while, in Scott Duniway’s version, praise be to Mother, who makes home so hospitable.
PROGRESSIVE PARTY LUNCHEON – February 25, 1914
According to one historian, 1912 represented “the high tide of Northwest progressivism.” That year, Idaho joined Washington and Oregon in adopting the initiative, referendum, and recall, while Oregon joined her sisters in approving woman suffrage. And many reformers, typically Protestant, middle-class Republicans, were swept up in third-party politics, when former Republican chief executive Theodore Roosevelt […]
According to one historian, 1912 represented “the high tide of Northwest progressivism.” That year, Idaho joined Washington and Oregon in adopting the initiative, referendum, and recall, while Oregon joined her sisters in approving woman suffrage. And many reformers, typically Protestant, middle-class Republicans, were swept up in third-party politics, when former Republican chief executive Theodore Roosevelt again ran for President, this time as the head of his own Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” Party. Roosevelt outpolled incumbent Republican William Howard Taft nationally, and carried Washington, but lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who carried Oregon and Idaho.1 The women of Webfoot fared better, although the margin was slim: Out of 118,369 votes cast, their majority was 4,161.2 Although progressive, reformist currents were diverse and far-reaching, the third-party experiment was short-lived and, arguably, counterproductive: By 1916, Roosevelt had returned to the Republican fold and progressives discovered that they had surrendered the party to conservatives bent on undoing past reforms.3 But during its limited life, the local party organization invited Scott Duniway to its weekly luncheon at the Portland Hotel. She must have seemed like one of them: a Protestant, middle-class professional and reform-minded Republican. Certainly, woman suffrage was a legacy of progressivism’s faith in human reason and the innate morality of persons, tenets that Abigail shared.4 However, prohibition was one reform, embraced by many Progressives, that Scott Duniway never could accept. In earlier days, fearing prohibition’s “boomerang” upon woman suffrage, she sought to separate the two causes in the public mind. But now her attention would shift to battling prohibition itself, particularly an amendment that would be on the November ballot.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_5_117" id="identifier_5_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail’s focus shifted at this stage partly because the vote in Oregon was won. No doubt she continued to worry about a “boomerang” in the remaining nonsuffrage states. Nonetheless, aged and crippled, she had not the wherewithal to contribute elsewhere (her final N.A.W.S.A. convention had been Seattle in 1909). In fact, after the “arduous campaign” of 1912, Oregon suffragists generally “folded their hands for a quiet rest until the cry for help came from other States”; an active alliance was not reconstituted until March, 1915. Scott Duniway also opposed the directions in which younger leaders were taking the movement. Even as a member of its Advisory Council (Lunardini 52-53), Scott Duniway objected to the militant tactics that English suffragettes had pioneered and that Alice Paul’s newly-formed Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was urging upon N.A.W.S.A. (Surely, Abigail must have been horrified by the report, shortly after this luncheon address, that Mary Richardson had taken a meat axe to Velasquez’s painting of Venus in the National Gallery in London, in protest of Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst’s arrest!) She also opposed the Union’s pursuit of the “federal route” to suffrage, commenting: “It has appeared better to me to take state by state, and go a little slow. Young people are aggressive and enthusiastic but then they have not had to wait for 42 years for the vote as I have” (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 245-46, 6: 548-49; “Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association (1909)“; Weatherford 186, 196-98; Oregon Daily Journal 6 Mar. 1914, 10 Mar. 1914).">5 While busily readying her autobiography for publication (and for use in the opposition campaign), Abigail on this Wednesday argued her case for an hour and a half. Her address is retrospective in form and reflective in tone. From the vantage point of success, Scott Duniway looks back over her long involvement in the equal suffrage cause, relating events in historical narrative. She argues, familiarly, that the linkage of the franchise with prohibition delayed the former’s victory. What is different and very interesting about her treatment of the subject here is her narrative of the personal experiences that led her to oppose prohibition even as she supported temperance. Perhaps nowhere else is her defense of individual responsibility so convincing; supported, as they are here, by stories of her husband and sons (among others), her theological arguments for personal restraint, rather than legislation, seem utterly genuine. A second significant aspect of this address concerns Scott Duniway’s economic views. She elaborates the theme, touched on only briefly in her 1909 O.S.E.S.A. Presidential address, that homemaking should be a remunerative occupation, organized like a business. Although it is easy to reduce Scott Duniway’s arguments from principle to making woman’s enfranchisement the ultimate, final aim, rather than means to other ends, this does not mean that she naïvely thought of equal suffrage as a panacea. Discussions like this one make it clear that Scott Duniway believed that equal rights for women required a measure of economic independence and security as well. It took forty-two years for Abigail to prevail on the Woman Question; she would not live long enough to prevail on the prohibition question. Ten days after this speech, the newspapers reported that Oregon was to become the “keystone” in the national prohibition movement, with Prohibition Party national chairman, Virgil G. Hinshaw, of Chicago, “personally to conduct the fight” during a two-month-long visit to the state.6 The following day it was announced that a Scott Duniway nemesis, Maria Louise Trenholm Hidden (part of the rival faction that had attempted the 1906 O.S.E.S.A. coup) would be a candidate for state representative from Multnomah County on the Progressive ticket.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_7_117" id="identifier_7_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="“Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association (1906)“; Oregon Daily Journal 16 Mar. 1914. Trenholm Hidden was influential in Progressive circles, having been the party’s candidate for Portland councilman-at-large and city commissioner the year before.">7 Prohibition would pass in Oregon in 1914. The text is taken from a heavily hand-revised typescript in Scrapbook #1 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. A significantly abbreviated version of this speech was reproduced as an eleven-page pamphlet entitled “True Temperance, By The Nestor8 of the Woman Suffrage Movement, Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway,” and issued by “A Real Temperance Alliance,” the United States’ Brewers’ Association of New York.9 While Scott Duniway claims here that such charges are a thing of the past, this appropriation undoubtedly confirmed the worst fears of those who suspected that she indeed was, and always had been, “sold to whiskey.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_10_117" id="identifier_10_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This speech, which the Oregon Daily Journal reported later the same day, sparked a lively debate in its editorial columns. See letter from M. A. Cooper, March 6, 1914; Scott Duniway’s reply, March 10; letter from Mrs. B. R. Carter, March 11; letter from Scott Duniway, March 13; letter from Mrs. H. E. Adams, March 14; letter from Dr. May Harris, March 15; and Scott Duniway’s reply to Carter and Adams, March 18. The Brewers’ Association pamphlet also reprints the last of these. The Morning Oregonian covered the speech on February 26.">10 While Scott Duniway’s editing is often very difficult to decipher, I have followed it whenever possible. Typescript material absent from the abbreviated pamphlet version is noted in “<>”. Pamphlet material missing from the typescript is noted in “\\”. <Madam Chairman11, members of the Progressive Party, Gentlemen and Ladies: In accepting your kindly and hospitable invitation to be present on this occasion, I had no intimation that I was to be considered the principal speaker of the occasion, nor had I known until this morning that the subject chosen for me to speak upon was the one against which the most formidable opposition could possibly be brought to bear.> Going back through the years that are gone, I recall my early childhood and the time when my Father<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_12_117" id="identifier_12_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="John Tucker Scott (1809-1880): born Washington County, Kentucky, eighteen miles and six days from Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace and date; second of seven living children, including five girls, of Frances Tucker and James Scott, who married in 1806; family moved to Illinois, 1824, settling in Tazewell County, where he was postmaster and sawmill manager; married Ann Roelofson; lost farm, 1840, and went bankrupt, 1842; joined Sons of Temperance, 1842; with assistance of Edward Dickinson Baker, purchased first circular sawmill west of Ohio, 1846; major contributor, Groveland Cumberland Presbyterian Church; elected county road commissioner; removed to Oregon, 1852, becoming innkeeper of Oregon Temperance House, Lafayette; married Ruth Eckler Stevenson, 1853, whom he divorced for bearing another man’s child and then reconciled, settling with her at Scott’s Prairie, near Shelton, on Puget Sound, Washington Territory, 1854; returned to Clackamas County, Oregon, near the Duniways, 1857; moved to Forest Grove, 1865; successful farmer, sawmill operator; benefactor, Pacific University (Moynihan, Rebel 1-50, passim; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 132, 5: 217-19).">12 and my Mother<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_13_117" id="identifier_13_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ann Roelofson Scott (1811-1852): born near Henderson, Kentucky; eighth of twelve children, including nine girls, of Mary Smith and Lawrence Roelofson; family came to central Illinois, c. 1821; met John Tucker Scott while assisting sister Esther Roelofson Johnson (wife of Rev. Neill Johnson, minister and missionary of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church) with childbirth on neighboring farm; difficult childbirths left her semi-invalid; did not want to go to Oregon but, following loss of twelfth child at birth, Tucker Scott believed that improved climate might cure her; died of “plains cholera” on Platte River, thirty miles west of Fort Laramie, during overland trip; “For the gentler sort of womankind–and to this type by all accounts Ann Roelofson belonged–life in the wilderness was a long agony of self-sacrifice” (Moynihan, Rebel 1-36, passim; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 10).">13 raised their family upon the strength of individual character. They said to us, and our children have echoed the sentiment all along the line, that the very strongest prohibition that could come to anyone came from himself, from within, not from the outside. They taught us that the very first official act of which the Adamic period has any record was that God placed temptation in the way of the people and commanded them to resist it <at their peril, and> I have never yet been able to see any stronger or better argument in favor of the broadest liberty for14 all the people and of the individual himself than in that wonderful rule laid down for humanity in the very beginning of its history. <Coming along through the different periods of my own humble life, I recall the days when as a humble, struggling wife and mother, on a pioneer farm in a cabin home, I churned the butter for market, which paid the taxes, I tended the poultry, I milked the cows, I raised the babies, I chased the coyotes away from the sheep, I followed all sorts of menial occupations of any kind that belong to the pioneer woman in any of the frontier walks of life, little dreaming that it would ever come to my lot to stand before the public in high and lowly places, to meet blame, to meet praise, to meet both together often, and always trying to steer my bark of liberty, straight through all the narrows of opposition.> Finally, coming into this Equal Rights movement, <of which you all have heard much, and which, at last, in my great Pacific States Bailiwick has become the law of this quiet progressive land,> I came into my15 first <public> temperance work, being <made> Secretary and Acting Chairman of a constitution gotten up by the State Temperance Alliance, <and> sending a delegation from the <despised and hated> Equal Suffrage Association to attend its annual meetings16. <We were met with all sorts of opposition.> We were prohibited from entering the Alliance as delegates, <after we had gotten it up. We were called “setting hens,” “belligerent females,” “disturbers, and breakers up of the home.” It was like> \and\ pandemonium <was> broken17 loose for two successive years when the <Temperance> Alliance met. <All this time equal suffrage forces [?] opposed the idea of getting prohibition into politics. The prohibition of equal suffrage was the uppermost thought in the minds and hearts [?] of the men who attempted to engineer that Alliance. Finally, however, there came a split, a division, and the disappointed minority, who could no longer prohibit the women from entering the Alliance, seceded and set up a little prohibition Union for themselves.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_18_117" id="identifier_18_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="I cannot possibly do justice to these raucous gatherings here. In 1872, at the meeting at which the Alliance officially was constituted, Abigail “effervesced with the wrath of the righteous” when her nomination to the executive committee from Multnomah County was not recognized, until she was elected a member at large. She read a set of resolutions that could not be heard “in the great merriment.” A license proposal requiring liquor sellers to obtain the signatures of a majority of “citizens” over the age of 21 residing in the affected precinct or ward was presented. She spoke against an amendment to this proposal, to substitute “legal voters” for “citizens.” The ensuing debate merged into the woman suffrage question. Mr. I. D. Driver (who had just been elected chaplain), voicing his opposition, declared that “if the instincts of women were right there would be no drunkards,” and argued that bad women would dominate the polls. Abigail responded: “Do you mean to say, sir, that we, as mothers and wives, are responsible for every whisky bloat? . . . I pronounce your libel upon womanhood a slander so vile that if we were but voters you would not dare to utter it.” Order was restored by “a liberal use of the gavel.” Later, she introduced a resolution endorsing woman’s right–based on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments–to vote on temperance matters, at which point an opponent moved for immediate adjournment. Motion having failed, the opponent contended that woman suffrage should be judged on its own merits, without the “embarrassment” to the temperance cause of “entangling alliances.” Abigail retorted: “You have been experimenting for forty years. We tell you that with woman’s assistance the victory is won. Why not try this experiment?” The resolution was passed amid much confusion and charges of “gag rule”; then it was moved and passed to reconsider the vote in order to let opponents have their say. Motions to indefinitely postpone and table the resolution failed, at which J. W. Wooden, member of the executive committee from Yamhill, threatened to quit the Alliance, declaring: “I think that this woman suffrage question is a damnable outrage. One woman has come into this Convention and kicked up more fuss than all the other delegates, and I don’t go a cent on letting her talk so much.” After Abigail moved to strike the references to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the resolution passed (ayes, 119; nays, 12), prompting “cheers lasting several minutes.” She was appointed a committee of one to present the resolution to the Legislature. Wooden then obtained passage of a resolution that the previous resolution’s endorsement of woman suffrage was confined to “the temperance question” only. Carried (New Northwest 1 Mar. 1872). Anti-suffragists would seek revenge the next year. At the outset, the Committee on Credentials recommended that Scott Duniway not be admitted on the grounds that the O.S.W.S.A. was a “political party.” When Abigail objected and moved to amend, a Kafkaesque parliamentary wrangle ensued: At issue was her right to object to the report, since only members were allowed to speak and the report had determined that she was not a member! When J. Quinn Thornton, a lawyer from Albany, read the Constitutional provision pertaining to “political parties,” Abigail retorted that, since the ballot was the distinctive feature of American politics, an organization whose members could not vote could not be political. Thornton replied, amidst laughter: “Although the woman announces her position with all the gravity of a setting hen, her sentiments amount to nothing unless it is to prove her sincerity.” More parliamentary maneuvering followed, in which it was ruled that the matter before the house was not Abigail’s amendment but the adoption of the report itself, and that only the previous year’s members were eligible to vote. A motion to adjourn was ruled out of order, and “a scene of indescribable confusion” ensued. The roll for 1872 was called, and 297 people failed to respond; Abigail’s amendment failed, 17 to 22. But the tide was turning. She was nominated for the presidency of the Alliance, but declined. A motion to admit Virginia Olds elicited “some allusions offensive to numerous ladies” from Judge Thornton; when Abigail rose to their defense, he demanded that the Sergeant-at-Arms “take that crazy woman out of the house”: “The Sergeant at Arms advanced to his task with evident pleasure written on his countenance, amid loud imprecations from one or two venerable gentlemen. Mrs. Duniway held her position [with the help of sharp pencils, by her account!], the peace officer standing at a respectful distance. When the lady concluded, she took her seat amid loud cheers.” The convention took up a resolution admitting Abigail as a delegate at large, commencing “a turmoil that defies the graphic powers of mortal man.” But, in the end, the resolution passed, 97 to 72. Others were similarly admitted, whereupon Wooden, representing “the Committee of Seventy on Alliance Reform,” announced “with inimitable grace and a profusion of adjectives” their intention to secede and form a State Temperance Union (New Northwest 28 Feb. 1873; Abigail also relates a version of these events in “The Woman Suffrage Movement and Two Kinds of Prohibition“). By comparison, the fourth meeting of the Alliance, in 1875, was “remarkable throughout for the earnest and harmonious labors of its members.” Its committee on political action proposed a series of resolutions, one of which would have coordinated efforts with the rival State Temperance Union. The resolutions were opposed by Abigail and others, but passed “by a large majority.” Two other items of business are noteworthy. Scott Duniway proposed a resolution, which was adopted unanimously, declaring that the licensing of intoxicants is “but the granting of indulgences by the Government to commit sin, and we, as a Temperance Alliance, protest against it in any form.” Abigail would change her mind by 1886, coming to view licensure as a discouraging tax (“Equal Rights for All” n. 112). The Alliance also endorsed the Temperance Star, which she recently had disparaged as the “Temperance Turkey Buzzard,” as its official organ (About Scott Duniway; on the 1875 proceedings, see New Northwest 26 Feb. 1875). At this point in this address, Abigail crossed out a subsequent sentence: “This is a matter of history which many of you younger people probably have not heard about.”">18 Then came an open demand for political prohibition of the liquor traffic, and when I began to oppose it as unchristian and unAmerican, at once to get into a fight [sic]. I had had no organized body but the church to fight us at first. The church made the first organized effort to prohibit the enfranchisement of women. But, after the church began to learn that it might use woman suffrage as a “short cut to prohibition,” it began to stand in a half hearted way for the enfranchisement of women, thus partly eliminating one class of prohibition but [?] attempting [undecipherable] by [?] another. The church [undecipherable] to oppose liberty, compelling one [?] to [undecipherable] another another element<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_19_117" id="identifier_19_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Given her abominable handwriting here, the original, legible typescript better conveys the sense of this passage: “. . . after the church began to learn that it might use woman suffrage as a shortcut to prohibition, it began to stand in a way for the enfranchisement of women, thus eliminating one class of prohibition, and in its idea I began to see another element come up to oppose us, and that was called the liquor traffic.”">19, and that was called the liquor traffic, which is not confined, and never has been, to men who are engaged in the business simply, but appeals to all the supporters and proponents of the business, who are its customers and consumers, who create and carry out its demands. The work for prohibiting the prohibition of equal suffrage went on for years before the prohibition agitation against the liquor traffic had gotten into politics.> The enfranchisement of women had carried in the Territory of Washington in 1883. The prohibition movement came up <in another shape> \immediately\ thereafter, <in attempts> to prohibit the liquor traffic. <It is very easy to fight an enemy. I rather enjoy the attempt of an enemy [to] knock a chip from my shoulder. But I want it to be a good-natured, open, honest fight, always. However, I did not oppose the prohibition movement as long as it seemed [?] to work openly, and as I believed honestly, for the prohibition of the liquor traffic, till equal suffrage began to be aided secretly by men engaged in the liquor traffic, and their aiders and supporters. While we were in the midst of our move for the enfranchisement of the women of Washington Territory, before the Legislative Assembly of 1883, the President of the National Liquor League, in Chicago, telegraphed to the President of the Senate in Olympia, and ordered that prohibition be accepted by the people of Washington while they were a territory. I could not attend the prohibition fight that disenfranchised [?] the women of the Territory, though urged to do so by my clientele in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. The trailing wing of the death angel was hovering over my home. My only daughter<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_20_117" id="identifier_20_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Belle Duniway Stearns (1854-1886): oldest child, and only daughter, of Ben and Abigail; in face of family disapproval, eloped with Don H. Stearns, publisher of short-lived, muckraking Portland Evening Bee and land speculator, December, 1876; “taken ill by something mysterious” in “swampy desolation” of Lake Camus on the Washougal during recession, 1884, which Stearns treated with hot lemonade for several months; returned to Duniway home in Portland, suffering from consumption, summer, 1885; died January, 1886; loss of “the precious earth-life that has throbbed in unison with ours since the days of our earliest womanhood” profoundly stirred Scott Duniway’s grief and sense of mission: at the end, Abigail told Clara, “I wish I could go with you darling,” to which her daughter’s last words were, “You must finish your work, Ma!”; Scott Duniway, with long-standing spiritualist convictions, reported contact with Clara “through private psychic sources, within a month; and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (Moynihan, Rebel 124-26, 133; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 279).">20 was in the last throes of a fatal illness, and I could not leave her side; but I wrote to friends in Olympia, urging them to stop that prohibition movement, because it prohibited women’s right to vote.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_21_117" id="identifier_21_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This is an abridged version of the W.C.T.U.’s campaign for local option during the Territorial Legislature of January, 1886, and Clara’s death from consumption, which Abigail had recounted in vivid detail in “Ballots and Bullets” in 1889.">21 A woman whose son was in the telegraph office of a Washington Territory town, had come to me and told me that her son had heard an order from the Liquor League’s President residing in Chicago, commanding the Legislature to give the women, while Washington was yet a territory, all the rope they wanted. But I could not act, and the husbands of the women who wanted me to come to Olympia were not willing that their wives should act, unless I would be there to take in my own breast all the barbed arrows of the opposition. So the enfranchisement of women went by default, when the next Legislature met; and the territory, being on the eve of statehood, men and women not believing in this iron bound movement that had come calling itself prohibition, shut the iron gates of a state constitution in the faces of the women, leaving them disenfranchised on the outside. I am relating history that will continue to be verified long, long after everyone of us has passed to the unseen shores.> There came up, by this time, a band of political agitators. Men and women who undertook to make money by the prohibition movement. Some of them were honest, but most of them were demagogical.22 < [A]nd when I tried to hold in abeyance, not only the prohibition of the enfranchisement of women, but the prohibition of what men called the liquor traffic, there came the cry from women in whose interest I had toiled and slaved, and borne for a quarter of a century the opposition that comes to every genuine movement; and tried to trample me in the dust. They said I was “sold to whiskey,” forgetting that whiskey was delighted all the time to see this conflict coming up between prohibition of one kind and prohibition of the other kind, crushing women’s enfranchisement between the upper and nether millstones of the two great movements. Now it is a well known law of nature that whenever two opposing forces come into conflict, the result is inertia. Prohibition means the doctrine of force. Equal suffrage means the doctrine of freedom, and when the two came into collision, inertia was the result. Now, what has to be done? The enfranchisement of women had gone abroad through the circulation of my newspaper, “The New Northwest,” which was carried on for sixteen years. I went everywhere, up and down, and to and fro, in this great bailiwick of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, spreading the light of liberty. I had seen women, in my humble occupation as a drudge on a farm, devoted to all sorts of occupations, toil, hardship and suffering. I had thought, until I got into business, that I was about the only woman that looked upon these questions as I did, and I felt I had no right to complain, for my husband was not a drinking man, he was not unkind, he was a good husband as husbands went, and a good father. His idea of raising a family was to feed them liberally. “Give the children,” he would say, [“]all the good, wholesome food, at regular meal times, that they can assimilate. Give them fruits, milk, butter, cream, meats, all the different luxuries, including plenty of sweets, and they will grow up with wholesome stomachs and no appetite for the excesses that debase a man.” That was the temperance movement of our home, and it was one in which I entered with all my soul.> At last after these23 troubled meetings in the Temperance Alliance, of24 which I have only \had\ time to allude, Judge J.25 F. Caples<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_26_117" id="identifier_26_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="John Fletcher Caples (1832-1908): born Ohio; admitted to bar, 1853; came to Vancouver, Washington, 1865, and Portland, 1866; ardent Republican; elected to state legislature, 1872, chaired judiciary committee, helping elect John Mitchell to U.S. Senate; U.S. District Attorney, 1878-84; U.S. consul to Valparaiso, Chile, 1897-1901; presidential elector, 1892 and 1896; married Sarah J. Morrison, 1854; six children (Hines 987-88; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 291-92; Scrapbook #53: 32, OR Hist. Soc.; History of the Bench 262; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 291-92).">26, whom many of you doubtless yet remember, made an arrangement with me in which he was chosen President, and I Vice-president, for several years, of what we called “The Open Temperance meeting.”27 It was not a prohibition movement. It was a temperance movement.28 <Judge Caples had a book, which is, doubtless, somewhere in existence today; I don’t know where, but his family doubtless know, in which he stated, when we were about to adjourn, sine die, that we had secured four thousand temperance signatures. That was long ago, when Portland was young; and> finally, <after the work had gone on, and had brought a great many favorable mentions from all parts of the land,> \Judge\ Caples came to me one day <and said, and> his face <was as> black29 as a thunder cloud, “Mrs. Duniway, there has a new movement come up30 in this country; they call it Prohibition. It is a fad, <and> it is not going to hurt the liquor traffic. It is not going to hurt anything but temperance <and honest citizenship>; and I am in favor of quitting this open temperance movement while our credit is good, because fanaticism will not hesitate to lie. Men31 <and women> may grow lachrymose over the existence of the saloon32; but33 it will all be like the mountain that was in labor to produce a mouse.” <After a little thought, and talking it over with my husband34,> we concluded to disband the open temperance meeting and follow the advice of \the\ <experienced business> men who said, “Let this prohibition movement, run its course, like measles or any other contagious epidemic that the people want to shun and can’t;” and so our temperance campaign was sidetracked for the prohibition movement, and the reform of the drunkard was lost sight of under the new dispensation. Men and women began to work from the wrong end of the reform. They tried to lay the blame of drunkenness, not upon the man, not upon the one who indulged in it, but upon the liquor <that was in itself an intransitive agent, and could not disturb anybody that would let it alone. Then came up the lachrymose, emotional idea that Caples foresaw. “Here are the drunkard’s wife and the drunkard’s family; God knows they need our sympathy,” said the theorist who had found a new way to raise money. The claim I had found for the cure of all this was not an iron-clad rule that would disturb peace, honesty and fidelity, and create law-breaking, duplicity and lies in every direction, but a movement to declare married women, as much as single women, no longer to be servants without wages in the home. I claimed that the marriage relation was a business, or ought to be; that the raising of a family was a business, or ought to be, and the woman who was depleted in pocket, merely living in poverty and deprivation of every kind, was not enabled to demand of her husband as strict a line of moral rectitude as he, no matter how fallen he was, would demand of her. But my movement was not considered popular. Men, many of them with rum blossomed [?] noses, were finding occupation in pulpits, from which I was closed; and they demanded an iron-clad law of force, instead of the ingrowing and outspreading doctrine of freedom that would spread among all the people. But the work for the enfranchisement of women went on, and almost involuntarily, the majority of men began at last to look upon it with favor; and on the 5th day of November, 1912, they voted “yes” for us by a handsome majority.> <Then again35,> as in Washington Territory \after the enfranchisement of women\, came this <other> prohibition movement settling36 itself upon Oregon as a storm center; and men who had discovered their volubility to be equal to the Falls of Niagara grew intoxicated with one idea, <and that idea was that they must close up the liquor traffic and leave the rest of the world to take care of itself. I used to say sometimes, when talking on this question many years ago, that if you were afflicted, or your child or friend, with an abscess in the side,- and I compared drunkenness to the abscess,- and you would call a physician and he would prescribe a prohibition plaster big enough to cover all the outer edges even of that forming and formed abscess, and he, after prescribing and applying that plaster, pronounced the patient cured, a ten year old child who had had the teaching of the common school could tell you that that prohibition plaster would only cause the evils that formed the abscess to burrow deeper and deeper and deeper into hidden places in the body of the afflicted person, and rot that patient to its death. Of course I could not then meet the kindly opposition that, thank God, today is growing up among the people. I no longer hear the cry that I am sold to whiskey. Even the most infamous liar that ever promulgated that sort of a story has gotten ashamed of it and if they repeat it at all, they say it secretly, or think they do, and it passes unnoticed. But today we have such a stirring up of the forces of agitation all over this country that you cannot pick up a daily paper without reading of the arrest and incarceration and trial of men who have been caught bootlegging, blindpigging37, all that sort of thing, to hide away that abscess of drunkenness that exists in the side of the nation; but is not curing it and is not reaching the source of the evil. Now, friends, what are we today?> I am old and stricken in years; my next birthday will make me eighty years of age. I have raised a large family of sober sons, who have passed the drugstore and the groggery38 every day of their lives on their way to school, \and\ to office and to39 the larger work of businessmen, that has brought them out into the country, in educational institutions, in commercial activities, in legal action and in literature. <These men have not needed prohibition, because I have said to them, “Boys, if you go wrong, your mother will be blamed, and I would accept the blame and say `I am sorry that I could not do a better work than to raise drunkards, but if that has been my job I will take the blame and say, I have failed in my duty.’” Why, that was always admonition enough and will be for any boy who has been taught to respect the mother who bore him ar her peril, who toiled for him in sickness and in health, and who would go gladly if need be to the very gates of death to rescue him from the evil consequences of evildoing. Now, dear friends, I know that this is not a popularly accepted theme today, the newspapers do not discuss it as I think they ought and as I know they must before it shall be properly settled. When God undertakes to raise a mast for a mighty ship that is to bear upon its bosom the heaving waters of a great ocean, and meet and buffet the mighty winds of the heavens, he does not plant that mast to grow inside a glass case, but on a weather beach where the winds of heaven can blow upon it, where the winds not only are to be resisted, but the hail, snow, rain, and the cold and heat. The dews of heaven are left to nourish it, and when at last it grows tall and strong and grand, it is ready for the woodman’s ax to place it as a mast, to carry the sails of ocean steamers to distant ports, and to all the isles of the sea.> “Oh” somebody says,40 “doesn’t God prohibit everything that is evil? Aren’t the Ten Commandments full of prohibition?” Yes, the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not steal,” but the Ten commandments do not hide away in the bowels of the earth everything that man can steal. On the contrary, the Ten Commandments place in your way and mine temptation41 and say to us, “Resist <it> or take the consequences.” Then they say42, “Thou shalt not kill.” <Yes,> but you shall not take everybody and shut them in the penitentiary to prevent it because now and then one person wants to be or has to be killed43. What you want to do is to place all the safeguards of protection you can around every individual, however high or low, rich or poor, teaching them44 that he that conquereth himself is greater than he that taketh a city45. We can never have temperance in its truest sense until we have raised men and women who are willing to abide by the rule of self-protection. \If we are to cure the evil of intemperance, let us be rational, let us be reasonable.\ <One day a few years ago I was going over to the City of Washington in obedience to a message from the Governor, Gov. Benson<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_46_117" id="identifier_46_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frank Williamson Benson (1858-1911): born San Jose, California; University of the Pacific, B.A. 1877, M.A. 1882; came to Douglas County, 1880, to teach at Umqua Academy; married Harriet Rush Benjamin, 1883; two sons; country school superintendent, 1882-86; president, Drain normal school, 1886-88; Douglas County clerk, 1882-86; admitted to bar, 1898, practicing until 1907; Secretary of State, 1907-11; temporary governor, 1909-10, succeeding George Earle Chamberlain, who resigned when elected to U.S. Senate; resigned governorship due to failing health and went to California, but remained Secretary of State until death; Republican (Scrapbooks #36: 68, #264: 41, OR Hist. Soc.; cf. Who was Who 85; Corning 26-27).">46, who empowered me to act as his representative in the National Conference of United States Governors. It was a notable meeting in the city of Washington, but on the way I met with a delay. There came a terrible snowstorm, one of those blinding, blanket affairs such as they are now enduring over the East and middle West, from which we are happily free, and our train was stalled near some little station and remained so for several hours. The night was coming down. I asked the porter to make up my berth early, so that I could put on the electric light near me, that I might read in my berth. He left the upper berth down over the lower end of the bedding and was in the act of preparing to make up my berth when a little woman,- she was a pretty little body; she had gray fluffy hair and a very pretty powdered complexion and was dressed in an evening garb, evidently she had gone from the lecture room to the train, came to me and said, “Excuse me, but are you going far”? “Yes,” I said, “to the farther East.” She said, “Then would you kindly ask the porter to make up my berth first, as I will have to get up early in the morning?” I said, “certainly,” and I called the porter and I made way for the lady and her baggage in my berth and she sat by me. Pretty soon a waiter came from the dining car bearing a tray with two foaming steins of beer. He was going through to the apartment where the men were, and this started her off like a deluge and she said, “It won’t be two years until we have that abomination driven from our land, don’t you think so?” “Well,” I said, although I didn’t want to get into an argument, “well, that depends upon whether men are willing to buy it and use it. The demand is the thing for us to consider.” “Ain’t you a prohibitionist?” “Well,” I said, “I can’t see but one power that can prohibit human nature and that is God, and He doesn’t act; and I don’t see how we are going to bring it about unless the individual is willing to prohibit himself.” “Do you mean to say that God is the author of alcohol?” she asked, and she looked at me with a venom that reminded me of old times when they accused me of being sold to whiskey. “Why, yes,” I said, “our scriptures teach us that nothing was made except God made it.” “I don’t want anything to do with your sort of a God!” she said, and she clutched my arm like it was in a vice and then got up and switched herself away to the end of the car until her berth was made up. Then without thanking me for my courtesy, removed her baggage from my berth with a jerk, and flounced into her own. The next morning when I awoke she was gone; and a couple of ladies across the aisle had known her and I asked them who she was, and they said, “Oh, she is one of those prohibition advocates that gives advice to God in the churches.” After a few more sentences the waiter came in from the dining car and said, “Last call for breakfast in the dining car,” so I did not see those ladies again. That dear little reformer who was so contaminated by the idea that I said God was the author of alcohol has never crossed my orbit again; but I doubt not she will be here in the next six or eight months to tell the people just exactly what God has compelled them to do. I simply don’t believe in such methods; and yet I am glad to say that the world is getting better all the time. Years ago we had no institutions to bring up neglected children. Only recently we have put it in the hearts of the Parents and Teachers Association to bring lunches at noon for hungry school children. We have not had until recently an opportunity for women to vote their silent sentiments upon any of the great questions of the day. Regardless of the attacks that are made upon the old wheel horse and leader for liberty who secured for women the right to vote, liberty is gaining ground, and the world is getting better. There is one movement I must speak of before I close that I do glory in above all others, and that one is in keeping with what I have told the people for the last forty years. The freedom of woman is to be the cure for the evils they suffer from intemperance. I did not expect that in less than two years thereafter women could vote, a woman would arise like that Mrs. Valentine, of Union, of whom you have been reading for a few days, to cause the Governor<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_47_117" id="identifier_47_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Oswald West (1873-1960): born Guelph, Ontario, Canada; came to Oregon at age 4; to Salem, 1877; drove cattle and worked for father’s butcher shop; worked in banks beginning 1889; married Mabel Hutton, 1897; Alaska gold rush, 1899; state land agent, 1903-07; state railroad commissioner, 1907-10; admitted to bar, 1910; Governor, 1911-15; Democrat; perhaps most colorful governor in Oregon history; noted for prison reform (instituting honor system), saving beaches for public by making tidelands part of highway system, minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, and women’s pension laws, child welfare commission, fish and game commission; supported suffrage; also supported prohibition; exposed graft in school lands scandals; vetoed 72 of 233 bills (Corning 261; Who’s Who in Oregon 231; “Biography–West, Oswald,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.).">47 to send a woman to her rescue. That woman complained that her husband is a drunkard, that the men who sold the liquor did not heed her cry to protect him from himself, and the result has been that Miss Hobbs is getting into moving pictures and is going around the world pretty soon in the movies as an evangel of the good time coming when women will be able to protect themselves from drunken husbands.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_48_117" id="identifier_48_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In a “local option” election in November, 1910, Union County voted “wet” but the precinct within which the town of Cove was located voted “dry.” Despite charges that it was selling liquor to minors and was operating illegally, the one saloon in town, operated by Ernest Thorson, remained open, with a city license and the support of city officials. In February, 1914, Mrs. Amy Valentine of Cove wrote Governor West to complain that her husband drank to excess, that Thorson ignored her directive not to sell him liquor, and that District Attorney Ivanhoe was not helpful, advising that she would need to file a costly civil suit. Ivanhoe, while conceding that “moral conditions in Cove are bad” and claiming that he would close the saloon if he could, argued that the precinct legally remained wet because County Judge Henry had failed to issue an order declaring the precinct dry within fifteen days of the election. Judge Henry claimed that he did not know that such an order was required and believed that the county-wide vote superseded the precinct’s vote. West, however, who was something of a crusader, already had made national headlines cleaning up the liquor traffic in Copperfield, sending Fern Hobbs, a young attorney (a 1912 graduate of Willamette Law School) and his personal secretary, into town with national guardsmen to close the saloons under conditions approaching martial law. This time, he sent Hobbs to investigate without troops but with a film crew to record events for posterity. The city council objected that Mrs. Valentine never had complained to them, claimed that minors may have obtained liquor through third parties but the saloon never sold it “direct,” and criticized the “fuss stirred up . . . because it will hurt our town.” After Hobbs’ investigation, West wrote Judge Henry, demanding that the county court issue an order of prohibition for the precinct in accordance with section 4929, Lord’s Oregon Laws, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baxter (49 Oregon, 353) that this section requires “the vote in each precinct even on a vote cast for the county as a whole” to “stand as an independent vote for that precinct for prohibition therein, as well as a part of the county vote on prohibition in the county as a whole.” The Morning Oregonian covered this story extensively, first on February 20 and then as front page news on February 23-25. The Copperfield saloon owners subsequently sued for $30,000 damages, but the governor ultimately prevailed in the state Supreme Court (“Biography–West, Oswald,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.).">48 That is my cure for the evils of intemperance. And whatever you may say in praise or blame of our present Governor, I do exult in the fact that he has the courage of his convictions and that when he thinks it is necessary to barnstorm an evil, he will send a woman to the rescue, and that woman is receiving all the encouragement that is needed from the responsible men who are engaged in the liquor business, as well as other men and women. Yes, the world is growing better. It is not going to be many years until we have a rational temperance reform instead of the lachrymose, emotional raid that is now going on all over this country engendering law breaking, infidelity and duplicity, but not touching whiskey, which, if driven into hiding, will flourish as long as men demand it.<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_49_117" id="identifier_49_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Newspaper coverage the next day, following a slightly shorter version of this sentence (ending at “whisky”), quotes her as adding, “Just the other day the Christian Advocate gave a long account of the marvelous increase in the use of intoxicants” (Oregonian 26 Feb. 1914).">49 > When a man becomes afflicted with the smallpox we send him to the pest house and put him in quarantine, but we don’t put all the rest of us50 in quarantine \with him\. We stay on the outside and do all \that\ we can to cure, or at least to51 relieve, the suffering of the man who is afflicted. Just so, with the drunkard who hasn’t <sufficient> stamina to control himself. Let us take charge of him <and cure his disease>, but let us not compel everybody else to go to the pest house because he must. Let us not compel every man in all the land52 to carry crutches because now and then one walks lame. That is not philosophy, that is not common sense; and <if in these utterances I have said one word that has hurt the feelings of anybody who thinks I am in the wrong, I can only say I am sorry, but> I speak the convictions that <have> come to me through long experience. <I have studied the work of the waves, of the sea, and the winds of the mountains and the plains. I have probed the secrets of nature from the day that the growing grain floats like glistening billows in the warm sunshine to the time when it is garnered and put into the homes of the people. I have studied the philanthropies that are stirring the hearts of the sons of women, who are breaking into new parties if the old ones don’t go to suit them, and this brings me to mention this Progressive Party, of which although I am not a member because I have not yet left my alma mater, the Republican Association which was modeled in the life and death of the martyred Lincoln and his great co-worker; yet, when I look back to the year 1884, I see Theodore Roosevelt<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_53_117" id="identifier_53_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1858-1919): Twenty-sixth, and youngest, President; born New York City; graduated Harvard, 1880; New York legislature, 1882-84; ranched in North Dakota, 1884-66; organized First U.S. Cavalry (Rough Riders), which distinguished itself in Cuba during Spanish-American War; Governor, New York, 1889-90; elected Vice-President as Republican, 1900, succeeding to Presidency upon William McKinley’s death, 1901; elected President, 1905-09; Progressive Party candidate for President, 1912; renominated 1916 but declined; championed civil service reform, trust-busting, conservation, and “the strenuous life” (Who was Who 1055).">53 in the State Legislature of the great State of New York. I had gone as a delegate from the Territory of Washington where we had enfranchised women, and I had been attending the National Equal Suffrage Convention in Washington, when I was placed in charge of a delegation to go to Albany from the National Association. Theodore Roosevelt was a boy at that time; that is, he was the youngest member of the lower House and no one young as he was in the upper House. He was placed in charge of our delegation, and to his credit be it spoken he rose to the occasion and championed us royally and loyally. Then, when he became Governor of New York, he gave an inaugural address demanding our enfranchisement, and while it is true that during part of the time that when Lyman Abbott<a href="https://asduniway.org/progressive-party-luncheon-february-25-1914/#footnote_54_117" id="identifier_54_117" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1835-1922): “disciple of [Henry Ward] Beecher and a religious journalist of great abilities”; born Roxbury, Massachusetts; graduated New York University, 1853; married Abby Frances Hamlin, 1857; ordained, 1860; pastor, Terra Haute, Indiana, 1860-65, and New York, 1865-69; joint editor with Beecher of The Christian Union, 1876-81; editor, 1881-1923 (Union changed name to The Outlook in 1893); succeeded to Plymouth pulpit upon Beecher’s death in 1887; helped shape Outlook less as miscellany and more as journal of opinion; generally Republican in outlook but avoided party politics; he opposed woman suffrage but allowed others to make the case; mutual admiration with Theodore Roosevelt (Mott 3: 426-33; Who was Who 3).">54 gave him a dollar a word for his articles, he was obliged to side-track us a little bit, he proved true to his convictions when he had another opportunity, and today he is one of the evangels of equal suffrage, and I honor him for it. I feel like–and you will pardon me for saying it here in the stronghold of his friends, where I am speaking with your courtesy,–I feel like saying that I would be thankful for the Progressive Party if for nothing else than because of the stand it has taken so bravely for the enfranchisement of women. Other parties will claim like acquiescence on the same principle, and I can say that this great movement for liberty for all the people is in direct opposition to the prohibition of self-government. Liberty is the divine principle up and out of which must come all the great movements for the amelioration of human destiny that is to make us all better, freer, purer, truer, more successful men and women than we were before. Before I take my seat let me ask you one favor, dear friends, a favor that extends to every one of you. I want you from this on, until the primaries close, to relax not one jot or tittle of your determination to get every man and woman you can to register. It is the first duty that we owe to the people of this great enfranchised state.> California has just spoken, through her vote of registered women, and has decided that it is not wise to55 destroy the grape industry by voting prohibition, <and they have voted it down>. Oregon’s duty is to decide that it is not wise to destroy the hop industry, which enables thousands of women to get money to pay taxes and educate their children. <It is not wise to cripple the transportation interests or the interests of those who are in all the different ramifications of business by upsetting conditions and making destruction of such conditions until the people do not know, or cannot plan for their future efforts for fear of getting into some sort of an ambush that will upset their best laid plans.> Let us be sensible, let us be temperate, let us be logical, let us be free and remember that our first duty is to see that everybody registers to be able to do their part in the great climaxes56 that are57 before us. <Robert Ingersoll58 said he was grateful to the Greenback Party for making the Greenback Party unnecessary. I am grateful to all these great upheavals for making common sense necessary. It will come, it must come.> \Common sense will prevail.\ Education, opportunity, knowledge, liberty,- above all things liberty-is what is to enable us to raise families of self- supporting, self-sustaining, self-protecting men and women. <I thank you.> NOTES Schwantes 350. Moynihan, Rebel 255 [n. 23]. Schwantes calls the third party movement a “misadventure” and “an ill-conceived protest vehicle that had no future” (350). Dodds 173. Abigail’s focus shifted at this stage partly because the vote in Oregon was won. No doubt she continued to worry about a “boomerang” in the remaining nonsuffrage states. Nonetheless, aged and crippled, she had not the wherewithal to contribute elsewhere (her final N.A.W.S.A. convention had been Seattle in 1909). In fact, after the “arduous campaign” of 1912, Oregon suffragists generally “folded their hands for a quiet rest until the cry for help came from other States”; an active alliance was not reconstituted until March, 1915. Scott Duniway also opposed the directions in which younger leaders were taking the movement. Even as a member of its Advisory Council (Lunardini 52-53), Scott Duniway objected to the militant tactics that English suffragettes had pioneered and that Alice Paul’s newly-formed Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was urging upon N.A.W.S.A. (Surely, Abigail must have been horrified by the report, shortly after this luncheon address, that Mary Richardson had taken a meat axe to Velasquez’s painting of Venus in the National Gallery in London, in protest of Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst’s arrest!) She also opposed the Union’s pursuit of the “federal route” to suffrage, commenting: “It has appeared better to me to take state by state, and go a little slow. Young people are aggressive and enthusiastic but then they have not had to wait for 42 years for the vote as I have” (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 245-46, 6: 548-49; “Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association (1909)“; Weatherford 186, 196-98; Oregon Daily Journal 6 Mar. 1914, 10 Mar. 1914). Oregon Sunday Journal 15 Mar. 1914. “Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association (1906)“; Oregon Daily Journal 16 Mar. 1914. Trenholm Hidden was influential in Progressive circles, having been the party’s candidate for Portland councilman-at-large and city commissioner the year before. In legend, Nestor was a wise old counselor who fought with the Greeks at Troy. The pamphlet is available in Mss 432 Abigail Jane (Scott) Duniway, Misc. Papers, OR Hist. Soc. This speech, which the Oregon Daily Journal reported later the same day, sparked a lively debate in its editorial columns. See letter from M. A. Cooper, March 6, 1914; Scott Duniway’s reply, March 10; letter from Mrs. B. R. Carter, March 11; letter from Scott Duniway, March 13; letter from Mrs. H. E. Adams, March 14; letter from Dr. May Harris, March 15; and Scott Duniway’s reply to Carter and Adams, March 18. The Brewers’ Association pamphlet also reprints the last of these. The Morning Oregonian covered the speech on February 26. Dr. Cora C. Talbott chaired the meeting; Mrs. Lora C. Little was chair at the luncheon (Morning Oregonian 26 Feb. 1914). John Tucker Scott (1809-1880): born Washington County, Kentucky, eighteen miles and six days from Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace and date; second of seven living children, including five girls, of Frances Tucker and James Scott, who married in 1806; family moved to Illinois, 1824, settling in Tazewell County, where he was postmaster and sawmill manager; married Ann Roelofson; lost farm, 1840, and went bankrupt, 1842; joined Sons of Temperance, 1842; with assistance of Edward Dickinson Baker, purchased first circular sawmill west of Ohio, 1846; major contributor, Groveland Cumberland Presbyterian Church; elected county road commissioner; removed to Oregon, 1852, becoming innkeeper of Oregon Temperance House, Lafayette; married Ruth Eckler Stevenson, 1853, whom he divorced for bearing another man’s child and then reconciled, settling with her at Scott’s Prairie, near Shelton, on Puget Sound, Washington Territory, 1854; returned to Clackamas County, Oregon, near the Duniways, 1857; moved to Forest Grove, 1865; successful farmer, sawmill operator; benefactor, Pacific University (Moynihan, Rebel 1-50, passim; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 132, 5: 217-19). Ann Roelofson Scott (1811-1852): born near Henderson, Kentucky; eighth of twelve children, including nine girls, of Mary Smith and Lawrence Roelofson; family came to central Illinois, c. 1821; met John Tucker Scott while assisting sister Esther Roelofson Johnson (wife of Rev. Neill Johnson, minister and missionary of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church) with childbirth on neighboring farm; difficult childbirths left her semi-invalid; did not want to go to Oregon but, following loss of twelfth child at birth, Tucker Scott believed that improved climate might cure her; died of “plains cholera” on Platte River, thirty miles west of Fort Laramie, during overland trip; “For the gentler sort of womankind–and to this type by all accounts Ann Roelofson belonged–life in the wilderness was a long agony of self-sacrifice” (Moynihan, Rebel 1-36, passim; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 10). Pamphlet: “of” Pamphlet: “the” Pamphlet: “attend the Temperance Alliance” Pamphlet: “broke” I cannot possibly do justice to these raucous gatherings here. In 1872, at the meeting at which the Alliance officially was constituted, Abigail “effervesced with the wrath of the righteous” when her nomination to the executive committee from Multnomah County was not recognized, until she was elected a member at large. She read a set of resolutions that could not be heard “in the great merriment.” A license proposal requiring liquor sellers to obtain the signatures of a majority of “citizens” over the age of 21 residing in the affected precinct or ward was presented. She spoke against an amendment to this proposal, to substitute “legal voters” for “citizens.” The ensuing debate merged into the woman suffrage question. Mr. I. D. Driver (who had just been elected chaplain), voicing his opposition, declared that “if the instincts of women were right there would be no drunkards,” and argued that bad women would dominate the polls. Abigail responded: “Do you mean to say, sir, that we, as mothers and wives, are responsible for every whisky bloat? . . . I pronounce your libel upon womanhood a slander so vile that if we were but voters you would not dare to utter it.” Order was restored by “a liberal use of the gavel.” Later, she introduced a resolution endorsing woman’s right–based on the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments–to vote on temperance matters, at which point an opponent moved for immediate adjournment. Motion having failed, the opponent contended that woman suffrage should be judged on its own merits, without the “embarrassment” to the temperance cause of “entangling alliances.” Abigail retorted: “You have been experimenting for forty years. We tell you that with woman’s assistance the victory is won. Why not try this experiment?” The resolution was passed amid much confusion and charges of “gag rule”; then it was moved and passed to reconsider the vote in order to let opponents have their say. Motions to indefinitely postpone and table the resolution failed, at which J. W. Wooden, member of the executive committee from Yamhill, threatened to quit the Alliance, declaring: “I think that this woman suffrage question is a damnable outrage. One woman has come into this Convention and kicked up more fuss than all the other delegates, and I don’t go a cent on letting her talk so much.” After Abigail moved to strike the references to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the resolution passed (ayes, 119; nays, 12), prompting “cheers lasting several minutes.” She was appointed a committee of one to present the resolution to the Legislature. Wooden then obtained passage of a resolution that the previous resolution’s endorsement of woman suffrage was confined to “the temperance question” only. Carried (New Northwest 1 Mar. 1872). Anti-suffragists would seek revenge the next year. At the outset, the Committee on Credentials recommended that Scott Duniway not be admitted on the grounds that the O.S.W.S.A. was a “political party.” When Abigail objected and moved to amend, a Kafkaesque parliamentary wrangle ensued: At issue was her right to object to the report, since only members were allowed to speak and the report had determined that she was not a member! When J. Quinn Thornton, a lawyer from Albany, read the Constitutional provision pertaining to “political parties,” Abigail retorted that, since the ballot was the distinctive feature of American politics, an organization whose members could not vote could not be political. Thornton replied, amidst laughter: “Although the woman announces her position with all the gravity of a setting hen, her sentiments amount to nothing unless it is to prove her sincerity.” More parliamentary maneuvering followed, in which it was ruled that the matter before the house was not Abigail’s amendment but the adoption of the report itself, and that only the previous year’s members were eligible to vote. A motion to adjourn was ruled out of order, and “a scene of indescribable confusion” ensued. The roll for 1872 was called, and 297 people failed to respond; Abigail’s amendment failed, 17 to 22. But the tide was turning. She was nominated for the presidency of the Alliance, but declined. A motion to admit Virginia Olds elicited “some allusions offensive to numerous ladies” from Judge Thornton; when Abigail rose to their defense, he demanded that the Sergeant-at-Arms “take that crazy woman out of the house”: “The Sergeant at Arms advanced to his task with evident pleasure written on his countenance, amid loud imprecations from one or two venerable gentlemen. Mrs. Duniway held her position [with the help of sharp pencils, by her account!], the peace officer standing at a respectful distance. When the lady concluded, she took her seat amid loud cheers.” The convention took up a resolution admitting Abigail as a delegate at large, commencing “a turmoil that defies the graphic powers of mortal man.” But, in the end, the resolution passed, 97 to 72. Others were similarly admitted, whereupon Wooden, representing “the Committee of Seventy on Alliance Reform,” announced “with inimitable grace and a profusion of adjectives” their intention to secede and form a State Temperance Union (New Northwest 28 Feb. 1873; Abigail also relates a version of these events in “The Woman Suffrage Movement and Two Kinds of Prohibition“). By comparison, the fourth meeting of the Alliance, in 1875, was “remarkable throughout for the earnest and harmonious labors of its members.” Its committee on political action proposed a series of resolutions, one of which would have coordinated efforts with the rival State Temperance Union. The resolutions were opposed by Abigail and others, but passed “by a large majority.” Two other items of business are noteworthy. Scott Duniway proposed a resolution, which was adopted unanimously, declaring that the licensing of intoxicants is “but the granting of indulgences by the Government to commit sin, and we, as a Temperance Alliance, protest against it in any form.” Abigail would change her mind by 1886, coming to view licensure as a discouraging tax (“Equal Rights for All” n. 112). The Alliance also endorsed the Temperance Star, which she recently had disparaged as the “Temperance Turkey Buzzard,” as its official organ (About Scott Duniway; on the 1875 proceedings, see New Northwest 26 Feb. 1875). At this point in this address, Abigail crossed out a subsequent sentence: “This is a matter of history which many of you younger people probably have not heard about.” Given her abominable handwriting here, the original, legible typescript better conveys the sense of this passage: “. . . after the church began to learn that it might use woman suffrage as a shortcut to prohibition, it began to stand in a way for the enfranchisement of women, thus eliminating one class of prohibition, and in its idea I began to see another element come up to oppose us, and that was called the liquor traffic.” Clara Belle Duniway Stearns (1854-1886): oldest child, and only daughter, of Ben and Abigail; in face of family disapproval, eloped with Don H. Stearns, publisher of short-lived, muckraking Portland Evening Bee and land speculator, December, 1876; “taken ill by something mysterious” in “swampy desolation” of Lake Camus on the Washougal during recession, 1884, which Stearns treated with hot lemonade for several months; returned to Duniway home in Portland, suffering from consumption, summer, 1885; died January, 1886; loss of “the precious earth-life that has throbbed in unison with ours since the days of our earliest womanhood” profoundly stirred Scott Duniway’s grief and sense of mission: at the end, Abigail told Clara, “I wish I could go with you darling,” to which her daughter’s last words were, “You must finish your work, Ma!”; Scott Duniway, with long-standing spiritualist convictions, reported contact with Clara “through private psychic sources, within a month; and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (Moynihan, Rebel 124-26, 133; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 279). This is an abridged version of the W.C.T.U.’s campaign for local option during the Territorial Legislature of January, 1886, and Clara’s death from consumption, which Abigail had recounted in vivid detail in “Ballots and Bullets” in 1889. The pamphlet combines these three sentences: “There sprang up by this time a band of agitators, men and women who undertook to make money by a new movement, some of them being honest, many of them demagogues.” Pamphlet: “the” Pamphlet: “to” Pamphlet, in error: “B.” John Fletcher Caples (1832-1908): born Ohio; admitted to bar, 1853; came to Vancouver, Washington, 1865, and Portland, 1866; ardent Republican; elected to state legislature, 1872, chaired judiciary committee, helping elect John Mitchell to U.S. Senate; U.S. District Attorney, 1878-84; U.S. consul to Valparaiso, Chile, 1897-1901; presidential elector, 1892 and 1896; married Sarah J. Morrison, 1854; six children (Hines 987-88; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 291-92; Scrapbook #53: 32, OR Hist. Soc.; History of the Bench 262; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 291-92). Pamphlet: “by which we organized what we called the Open Temperance Meeting, of which Judge Caples was chosen president, and I, vice-president.” Pamphlet, following the original typescript, substitutes “meeting” for “movement” in both sentences. Pamphlet: “dark” Pamphlet: “a new movement has arisen” Pamphlet: “Man” Pamphlet: “the bar of drunkenness” Pamphlet: “and” Pamphlet: “Finally” Pamphlet: “Here” Pamphlet: “centering” A “blind pig” was a speakeasy. Pamphlet: “saloon” Pamphlet: “in” Pamphlet: “Some people say:” Pamphlet: “place temptation in your way and in mine” Pamphlet: “The Ten Commandments include,” Pamphlet: “some person is killed.” Pamphlet: “him” Pamphlet: “he who conquereth himself, taketh a city.” Frank Williamson Benson (1858-1911): born San Jose, California; University of the Pacific, B.A. 1877, M.A. 1882; came to Douglas County, 1880, to teach at Umqua Academy; married Harriet Rush Benjamin, 1883; two sons; country school superintendent, 1882-86; president, Drain normal school, 1886-88; Douglas County clerk, 1882-86; admitted to bar, 1898, practicing until 1907; Secretary of State, 1907-11; temporary governor, 1909-10, succeeding George Earle Chamberlain, who resigned when elected to U.S. Senate; resigned governorship due to failing health and went to California, but remained Secretary of State until death; Republican (Scrapbooks #36: 68, #264: 41, OR Hist. Soc.; cf. Who was Who 85; Corning 26-27). Oswald West (1873-1960): born Guelph, Ontario, Canada; came to Oregon at age 4; to Salem, 1877; drove cattle and worked for father’s butcher shop; worked in banks beginning 1889; married Mabel Hutton, 1897; Alaska gold rush, 1899; state land agent, 1903-07; state railroad commissioner, 1907-10; admitted to bar, 1910; Governor, 1911-15; Democrat; perhaps most colorful governor in Oregon history; noted for prison reform (instituting honor system), saving beaches for public by making tidelands part of highway system, minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, and women’s pension laws, child welfare commission, fish and game commission; supported suffrage; also supported prohibition; exposed graft in school lands scandals; vetoed 72 of 233 bills (Corning 261; Who’s Who in Oregon 231; “Biography–West, Oswald,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.). In a “local option” election in November, 1910, Union County voted “wet” but the precinct within which the town of Cove was located voted “dry.” Despite charges that it was selling liquor to minors and was operating illegally, the one saloon in town, operated by Ernest Thorson, remained open, with a city license and the support of city officials. In February, 1914, Mrs. Amy Valentine of Cove wrote Governor West to complain that her husband drank to excess, that Thorson ignored her directive not to sell him liquor, and that District Attorney Ivanhoe was not helpful, advising that she would need to file a costly civil suit. Ivanhoe, while conceding that “moral conditions in Cove are bad” and claiming that he would close the saloon if he could, argued that the precinct legally remained wet because County Judge Henry had failed to issue an order declaring the precinct dry within fifteen days of the election. Judge Henry claimed that he did not know that such an order was required and believed that the county-wide vote superseded the precinct’s vote. West, however, who was something of a crusader, already had made national headlines cleaning up the liquor traffic in Copperfield, sending Fern Hobbs, a young attorney (a 1912 graduate of Willamette Law School) and his personal secretary, into town with national guardsmen to close the saloons under conditions approaching martial law. This time, he sent Hobbs to investigate without troops but with a film crew to record events for posterity. The city council objected that Mrs. Valentine never had complained to them, claimed that minors may have obtained liquor through third parties but the saloon never sold it “direct,” and criticized the “fuss stirred up . . . because it will hurt our town.” After Hobbs’ investigation, West wrote Judge Henry, demanding that the county court issue an order of prohibition for the precinct in accordance with section 4929, Lord’s Oregon Laws, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Baxter (49 Oregon, 353) that this section requires “the vote in each precinct even on a vote cast for the county as a whole” to “stand as an independent vote for that precinct for prohibition therein, as well as a part of the county vote on prohibition in the county as a whole.” The Morning Oregonian covered this story extensively, first on February 20 and then as front page news on February 23-25. The Copperfield saloon owners subsequently sued for $30,000 damages, but the governor ultimately prevailed in the state Supreme Court (“Biography–West, Oswald,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.). Newspaper coverage the next day, following a slightly shorter version of this sentence (ending at “whisky”), quotes her as adding, “Just the other day the Christian Advocate gave a long account of the marvelous increase in the use of intoxicants” (Oregonian 26 Feb. 1914). Pamphlet: “the population” Pamphlet: “to at least” Pamphlet: “all the men in the land” (1858-1919): Twenty-sixth, and youngest, President; born New York City; graduated Harvard, 1880; New York legislature, 1882-84; ranched in North Dakota, 1884-66; organized First U.S. Cavalry (Rough Riders), which distinguished itself in Cuba during Spanish-American War; Governor, New York, 1889-90; elected Vice-President as Republican, 1900, succeeding to Presidency upon William McKinley’s death, 1901; elected President, 1905-09; Progressive Party candidate for President, 1912; renominated 1916 but declined; championed civil service reform, trust-busting, conservation, and “the strenuous life” (Who was Who 1055). (1835-1922): “disciple of [Henry Ward] Beecher and a religious journalist of great abilities”; born Roxbury, Massachusetts; graduated New York University, 1853; married Abby Frances Hamlin, 1857; ordained, 1860; pastor, Terra Haute, Indiana, 1860-65, and New York, 1865-69; joint editor with Beecher of The Christian Union, 1876-81; editor, 1881-1923 (Union changed name to The Outlook in 1893); succeeded to Plymouth pulpit upon Beecher’s death in 1887; helped shape Outlook less as miscellany and more as journal of opinion; generally Republican in outlook but avoided party politics; he opposed woman suffrage but allowed others to make the case; mutual admiration with Theodore Roosevelt (Mott 3: 426-33; Who was Who 3). Pamphlet: “California will not” Pamphlet: “climax” Pamphlet: “is” Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899): politician and orator known as “the great agnostic,” advocating higher criticism of Bible, humanism, and scientific rationalism; Illinois Attorney General, 1867-69; staunch Republican.
“GREETING AND REMINISCENCE” – October 6, 1913
Delivered to the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, this speech is a narrative history of the club movement, with a surprising twist: Scott Duniway suggests that women’s clubs were organized as a way to quell the Prohibition “boomerang” (her term for the counterproductive effect that she believed Prohibition had on the cause of equal suffrage), […]
Delivered to the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, this speech is a narrative history of the club movement, with a surprising twist: Scott Duniway suggests that women’s clubs were organized as a way to quell the Prohibition “boomerang” (her term for the counterproductive effect that she believed Prohibition had on the cause of equal suffrage), essentially by providing alternative avenues for women’s civic and political impulses. Both here and in Path Breaking, Scott Duniway credits this “logical and necessary” idea to her close friend, Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart, who, almost thirty years earlier, had confided her rationale for starting the Woman’s Club of Olympia as an opportunity for “women who oppose the Suffrage Movement (or think they do) . . . to divest themselves of their prejudices.”1 Divestiture would be a rocky and incomplete process. Scott Duniway comments here that she often was “publicly reprimanded” for interjecting “telling shots for Equal Suffrage” into club meetings. The national federation of women’s clubs assiduously dodged the question.2 Nonetheless, that Abigail–who certainly was shrewd, if sometimes impolitic–felt sufficiently comfortable to air these sentiments publicly at a state-wide gathering of club representatives speaks to the distance that the club movement in Oregon had traveled in nearly twenty years.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_3_115" id="identifier_3_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Some corroboration comes from Sara Bard Field (1882-1974), a renowned poet, Christian socialist, and third-generation suffragist (also companion and eventual wife of Charles Erskine Scott Wood), who, in her late twenties, became the state organizer for the successful 1912 campaign. She personally was not keen on the clubs because they tended to study “piffling” things. In hindsight, however, she thought they had been “a help” in promoting woman suffrage, and in a “right on the surface,” not even “sub rosa” way (229, 240).">3 This thirteenth annual convention of the Federation met in Hood River. Three hundred fifty people braved a day-long downpour to attend the opening reception of the four-day meeting, in the Commercial Club. Abigail delivered “the chief address of the evening” as its first honorary president, an accolade she had received in 1911.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_4_115" id="identifier_4_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbooks, 1912-13 and 1913-14, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Scrapbook #2, Abigail Scott Duniway Papers; Morning Oregonian 7 Oct. 1913. The typescript from which this speech is taken is undated. All evidence, external and internal, points to this dating, with one puzzling exception (the Oregonian’s story on October 7 is dated September 6, but the month is clearly erroneous, not confounding): Scott Duniway refers to the “late” Heppie L. Ford Spalding. Path Breaking, published in 1914, does the same (213, 215-16). However, Ford Spalding did not die until March 26, 1915, following “an illness of several years” (infra, n. 16). Less-than-convincing explanations might be that, as an aging “rheumatic cripple” with limited access to “mortuary statistics,” as she confides here, Scott Duniway was misinformed; or that she was confusing Ford Spalding’s death with the latter’s husband’s, in 1905; or that, when her friend removed to the sanitarium, Scott Duniway thought she had died. In any event, Abigail is wildly wrong.">4 Much of this address is also epideictic (in fact, a eulogy) in praise of the (deceased) founders of the region’s Women’s Clubs, which reflects on life after death. Even though her concluding prediction of her own death within a year proved to be overly pessimistic5, Abigail’s age (two weeks shy of 79) and increasing infirmity render her speculations about the afterlife more personal and poignant. Accounts of this occasion and speech were reported in the newspapers. Interestingly, while some commented simply that Abigail had spoken in her characteristic way, the Morning Oregonian drew its readers’ attention to paragraph eleven with a sub-line that shouted “ANNA SHAW IS DENOUNCED.” The text is taken from an edited typescript in Scrapbook #2 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The sparer Oregonian version is seriously deficient because much eulogistic coloring has been removed. Material omitted by the newspaper appears in “<>” and other nontrivial discrepancies are explained in notes. Substantially the same material (albeit differently organized) also appears in Path Breaking.6 <In responding to the masterly greeting which honors us on this important occasion, what I say must be largely in the nature of a mortuary symposium.> It is most appropriate that this meeting of our State Federation should convene in this world-renowned young city of Hood River, the home of our late beloved co-worker, Mrs. E. L. Smith<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_7_115" id="identifier_7_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Georgia (Georgiana) Slocum Smith (?-1911): pioneer woman’s club leader in Oregon; founder, Hood River Woman’s Club; of Woodstock, Illinois; her father a staunch Democrat; attended Lombard University, Galesburg; married Ezra Leonard Smith, of Tazewell County, ardent Republican and also Lombard student, following Lincoln’s first inauguration, March 4, 1861; went to California immediately, then to Washington Territory, 1867, then to Hood River, March 1, 1876; well known for charity work with Native Americans of mid-Columbia Valley; instrumental in establishing Hood River county library; Unitarian; five daughters, one son (History of the Pacific Northwest 565-66; Sunday Oregonian 23 Jan. 1921, 30 Jan. 1921; Fred Lockley, “In Earlier Days,” Oregon Daily Journal 27 Aug. 1913; Sunset, the Pacific Monthly 29 (Oct. 1912): 439-41).">7 <, of whom it can truly be said: “None knew her but to love her, None named her but to praise.”8 It was my good fortune to begin the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. E. L. Smith, and their charming daughters in Olympia, in the Autumn of 1871, when I visited the Washington Territorial Legislature in the company of our distinguished leader of all progressive woman’s movements, the late Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_9_115" id="identifier_9_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">9 >. Mrs. Smith identified herself at that time with the Equal Suffrage movement10 as a co-worker with Mrs. Abby H. H. Stuart<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_11_115" id="identifier_11_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart (1839-1902): Washington suffragist inspired by Anthony’s and Scott Duniway’s 1871 visit to territorial legislature; chair, Washington Territory Board of Immigration, c. 1875-80; prominent clubwoman; founder, on March 10, 1883, and first president of Woman’s Club of Olympia (first woman’s club in Washington and second on Pacific Coast); chair, Constitution Committee, Washington State Federation of Woman’s Clubs organizing convention, September, 1896; treasurer, State Federation, 1898; wife of Robert G. Stuart; spoke at organizing meeting of Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895, becoming member, 1899; died at 62 in San Francisco, January 6 (M. Andrews 7; Beard 63; Croly 1132-34, 1144-46, 1149; Haarsager 59, 135, 191; “Third [sic: Fourth] Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 16, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Library Association of Portland Newspaper Index microfiche, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project).">11 and myself, beginning an intimacy that never ceased, though I, as the eldest of the trio, am today the only earthly survivor. Of Mrs. Stuart, mother of Woman’s Clubs in the Pacific Northwest, whose all too early decease cut short her hope of seeing the full enfranchisement of women in Oregon and Washington <(though she did live to see it in Idaho)>, I am proud to say that the Woman’s Club movement we now celebrate was her inspiration<, that it began with her and was successfully guided by her until called to the skies>. I met with Mrs. Stuart at the home of Mrs. Clara E. Sylvester<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_12_115" id="identifier_12_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara E. Pottle Sylvester (1823-?): born Deer Isle, Maine; came to Olympia in 1854 as wife of Edmund Sylvester (1821-1887), Eastport, Maine, native who came to Oregon, 1843, living in Astoria and Portland before moving to Chambers Prairie, Washington, 1846; upon death of partner Levi Lathrop Smith, 1848, Sylvester acquired claim on waterfront at Budd Inlet; following failed trip to California goldfields, 1849, he platted claim, founding city of Olympia; following his death, she moved to San Diego, California (“Our People”; “Our People, continued“; “Clara E. Sylvester (Pottle)“). The Sylvesters erected the showplace of early Olympia, an Italianate home that was the largest in the city, along Capitol Way between Seventh and Eighth Streets, facing the water. Clara hosted the first meeting of the Woman’s Club there in 1883 and housed many visiting suffragists during the fight of Washington women for the right to vote (“Historic Preservation Assessment and Action Plan” Sec. III: 25). Because her father had been among the early settlers on Puget Sound in 1854, before returning to Oregon in the wake of hostilities with the natives, Abigail was welcomed by pioneer friends during her travels and was “frequently entertained” by the Sylvesters and others (Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 101).">12 in Olympia <at the close of an exciting political upheaval over Territorial local option, with which neither of these ladies were in accord. Mrs. Stuart argued that as the combined forces of all business men were allied more or less directly with the liquor traffic, a prejudice had been created against Woman Suffrage through women’s part in the struggle which could no longer be combated openly. She suggested a new movement, beginning in Olympia, to be called a Woman’s Club, where everything else of public interest could be discussed except “religion, politics13 and temperance.”> Mrs. Sylvester, if I remember rightly, did not at once embrace the plan14 <, and I do not know that she ever affiliated with the Olympia Woman’s Club. But I saw at once, the logic of Mrs. Stuart’s reasoning and agreed with it implicitly. But I said that I was publishing The New Northwest, and openly advocating Equal Rights for women, and having burned my bridges behind me, had cut off retreat. “So much the better for us all,” said Mrs. Stuart, “Keep to your own firing line, and when the time is ripe for starting the Club movement in Oregon I will come over and help.”> For prudential reasons I, as a suffrage leader15, stayed away from the preliminary meeting with Mrs. Stuart, in Portland, held at the home of the late Mrs. W. W. Spalding<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_16_115" id="identifier_16_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Hephzibah (Heppie) Locke Ford Spaulding (or Spalding) (1840?-1915): daughter of Simeon Ford of Boston; married William Wallace Spaulding (1839-1905), who made his fortune in stock raising and meat packing, 1861; came to Portland, fall, 1862; member, First Unitarian Church; active in charity, especially Children’s Home in south Portland; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; died March 26, at 75, in sanitarium after “an illness of several years” (Spalding 769; Scott, History of Portland 628-29; Writer’s Project; Morning Oregonian 27 Mar. 1915; Hines 525-26).">16; but I risked attending the first open meeting, <held> at the Hotel Portland17, where I had the honor to demand the permanent formation of the Woman’s Club movement on the basis originated by Mrs. Stuart, and was the first woman in Oregon to suggest the creation of the State Federation of Woman’s Clubs18. <That I often disobeyed Mrs. Stuart’s suggestions by throwing telling shots for Equal Suffrage into the Club meetings, and was as often getting publicly reprimanded therefor, all older club members of Portland know. I lost track of Mrs. E. L. Smith for a time, and when I next heard of her and her charming family, they had become established in this wonderful Hood River Valley, and were primal movers in placing the world’s most marvelous apple industry on the maps of Oregon and the rest of the planet. What better can be said of our beloved risen friend than: “She builded better than she knew.”19 > The20 next great loss to the Woman’s Club movement <for the current year> was< met in the untimely decease of> Mrs. Myrtle Pease Hatfield, of the Forest Grove Woman’s Club<, a bride of a few months, who at once became noted as a leader of public and social activities in the classic town of her adoption, where she was suddenly stricken to death by a mysterious tragedy which threw Forest Grove into consternation and the progressive women of the entire State into grief.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_21_115" id="identifier_21_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Myrtle Evalyne Pease Hatfield (1873-1913): born Newton, Iowa; daughter of Clinton W. (1839-1913) and Margaret A. Pease; came to Oregon with parents, 1899; taught school in Albany for five years, c. 1904, then two years in rural sections, then three years in Mt. Tabor; resigned to take position with Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society, traveling throughout state “looking after neglected children, often undergoing great hardship and privation”; corresponding secretary, O.S.E.S.A., 1906-11; married Charles Hatfield, retired Forest Grove merchant, October 4, 1911. She died on Friday, March 14, 1913, after suffering for three or four days from a severe cold, and complaining of pain in her back and sides. However, she appeared to have rebounded shortly before her breathing stopped. Despite the suddenness of her death under “peculiar circumstances,” a coroner’s inquest found nothing abnormal and attributed her death to “apnoae,” contributing causes unknown (Forest Grove Press 20 Mar. 1913; Washington County News Times 20 Mar. 1913; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 215; cf. Springsteen, who says she was born in Nebraska in 1874).">21 Mrs. Hatfield had been corresponding secretary of the State Equal Suffrage Association for the six years preceding her marriage; and as traveling agent for the Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society, she has visited almost every part of the State in which in her quiet, tactful and intelligent way, she had sown the seeds of Votes for Women everywhere. The tax-payers Suffrage Amendment, which had been launched as an experiment in 1910, under the advice of experienced political leaders, had proved, as predicted, the best political education for women ever attempted since the disastrous result of the election of 1906, which under the domination of the National Woman Suffrage invasion, had left us swamped in the quicksands of what seemed a hopeless defeat. The smoke of the battle of 1910 had hardly cleared away before Miss Pease met me at my home, where she and I together prepared the full text of the clause in the State Constitution, to enfranchise women, which is now a part of the fundamental law. Our action was ratified by our Executive Committee at its next regular meeting, and as our treasury was practically empty, I borrowed $500.00 at bank, on my personal note, which our committee used to meet the expenses of the initiative petition to launch the next campaign. To you, my beloved sisters of the State Federation of Woman’s Clubs,> allow me to say, in justice to our risen22 friend <and co-worker, whose lips are sealed in mortal death>, that next to the name of Abby H. H. Stuart will stand in history the name and deeds of Myrtle Pease Hatfield, to whose quiet, tactful work among the voters throughout the State, we are more deeply indebted today for <our> enfranchisement than to any other agency in all our ranks.23 <“She rests from her labors, but her works do follow her.”> I regret that I cannot at this moment give you the date of Mrs. W. W. Spalding’s transition. <I am, as you see, a rheumatic cripple and cannot serve the Federation with such mortuary statistics as are not just at my hand. Suffice it to say of Mrs. Spalding that though gone from our sight she><a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_24_115" id="identifier_24_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="For the material in <>, OR substitutes “The memory of Mrs. Spalding”">24 is living within the hearts of those who loved her in life, and in her passing <away> she is not forgotten. The next shining light to pass from our Portland Club center since the last meeting of the Federation, was Mrs. Julia H. Bauer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_25_115" id="identifier_25_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Julia Heyman Bauer (1843?-1913): linguist and teacher, speaking seven languages fluently; born Buchsweiler (Alsace-Lorraine), France; educated Paris; resided Portland; married Jacques Bauer, merchant, April 14, 1864; moved to Walla Walla, establishing home on Alder near Fifth, which became “center of belles lettres” for that part of Washington; began teaching languages and needle work to officers at Fort Walla Walla, their families, and other residents; professor, modern languages, Whitman College, 1882; returned to Portland upon husband’s death, 1890; leader, department of English literature, Portland Woman’s Club, studying Shakespeare; authored dictionary in Volapuk (universal language invented by Johann Schleyer, 1877) which appeared at Chicago Exposition, 1893, and for which she received Doctor’s degree; four daughters–Emilie Frances, celebrated writer, composer, Minnie, Flora, Marion, also writer, musician; one son, Cecil, whom she tutored until he was 13 and who entered law school at Eugene, 1888; died July 16, at 70, following year’s illness; Bauer became Scott Duniway’s long-time neighbor, residing at 290 Clay St. (Morning Oregonian 17 July 1913; Sunday Oregonian 20 July 1913; Bowden 105-06; First Annual Report 4; “The First Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club, 1896-7” 11, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; History of the Bench 86).">25, an original leader in the Equal Suffrage movement, <whom I first met in Walla Walla, as early as 1872. Mrs. Bauer afterwards moved to Portland, and became an active club woman. She was> a notable thinker and Shakespearean scholar<, and was an early teacher of Volapuk, a mixture, for commercial use, of many languages, which she afterwards discarded for Esperanto, a later invention, which she readily acquired and taught with success>. It now becomes my solemn duty to record the name and eulogize the memory of Mrs. Elizabeth Lord<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_26_115" id="identifier_26_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Laughlin Lord (1841-1913): “with the possible exception of” Scott Duniway herself, “the best known of the pioneer women of Oregon”; born Missouri; daughter of William Catesby and Mary Jane Yeargain Laughlin, 1850 pioneers in The Dalles; on New Year’s Day, 1861, married Wintworth Lord (1832-1917), merchant, cattle- and sheep-man, and miller, who came to The Dalles from California, 1858; one of first proponents of suffrage in Oregon; vice-president, O.S.E.S.A., at death and “one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s most valuable aides”; president, Women’s Political Study club, a local suffrage society; First Reader, Christian Science Church of The Dalles; member, Sorosis; “a lady of marked literary taste and ability, and the author of a number of interesting articles and books,” including Reminiscences of Eastern Oregon, her diary of family’s overland journey and early years, 1903; “a woman of charming personality and of exceptionally brilliant mind even until the day of her death”; among fifty most outstanding people in history of Wasco County; died in August of heart trouble; two children, one who survived (McNeal 52, 65; Illustrated History of Central Oregon 278; Sunday Oregonian 4 Mar. 1917; Sarah Evans, “Women’s Clubs, Women’s Work,” Oregon Sunday Journal 20 Nov. 1904; Scrapbook #44: 87, #50: 86, OR Hist. Soc.; “Mrs. Lord is Called Suddenly,” Vertical File, “Biography-‘Lo’”, OR Hist. Soc.). In Path Breaking, Abigail describes her as “a pioneer of the early ‘40s” (216).">26, Vice-President of the State Equal Suffrage Association, a late <lamented> member and leader of The Dalles Woman’s Club<, who recently left this visible stage of action and is now abiding in the land of souls>. In my27 arduous work for woman’s enfranchisement which followed the <terrible> defeat into which we were thrown by the Anna Shaw<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_28_115" id="identifier_28_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A.; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexner, “Shaw”; Linkugel).">28 regime of 1905-6, Mrs. Lord and her <good> husband29 helped to finance the empty treasury of the Equal Suffrage Association, and revive the sinking spirits of our discouraged co-workers. When Anna Shaw, as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, <to which our state E.S.A. had paid tribute for 40 years (including $1,000 raised for it by myself in 1871),> confiscated our fund, and paid it over to a little campaign committee of a local Woman’s Club of Portland, I lay for many months on a bed of almost fatal suffering, upon which her malfeasance30 in office and its attendant disappointments had thrown me. I was not physically able to make a protest at the time, neither did I dare to do it, for the November election of 1912 was pending, and I could not permit the anti-suffragists to whip us by exposing sedition in our own ranks. Then, as31 time went on <and> I saw that Peter was being robbed to pay Paul, and my health had improved a little, I appealed personally to Mrs. Lord of The Dalles, Mrs. Hutton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_32_115" id="identifier_32_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary (May) Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915): illegitimate child, born in Ohio coal country; raised by father and blind grandfather; awakened to woman’s rights by discussion between father and overnight guest, young lawyer William McKinley; at 18, married Frank Day; at 22, married coal miner Gilbert Munn; came to Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho as mining camp and boardinghouse cook, 1883; married third husband, Levi W. “Al” Hutton, railroad engineer, November 17, 1887; fierce defender of organized labor during disastrous “Rocky Mountain Revolution” in mines, 1892-99; wrote, published and promoted “the true story” of labor troubles, The Coeur d’Alenes: A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, 1900; met and campaigned in Idaho with Scott Duniway, 1895; Hercules silver and lead mine, in which she bought 1/34 interest in 1897 and which began producing in 1901, made her fabulously wealthy within ten years; Democratic nominee for state legislature, 1904; joined N.A.W.S.A. and attended first national convention, in Portland, 1905; moved to Spokane, 1906, joining Susan B. Anthony and Scott Duniway in campaigning for suffrage in Washington, first working and then clashing with Emma Smith DeVoe over tactics, eventually splitting Washington Equal Suffrage Association during N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909; ardent Democrat and William Jennings Bryan supporter; first woman delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1912; noted philanthropist, especially Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, Spokane Charities Commission, and Hutton Settlement for orphaned and unwanted children; large, uncouth woman “with a questionable past and a flamboyant nature who was anathema to many other suffragists,” nonetheless Scott Duniway’s “close friend and disciple”; Scott Duniway rode in Thomas Flyer that Arkwright Hutton decorated and entered in Portland Rose Festival, 1897, and Arkwright Hutton was invited guest on platform for Scott Duniway’s seventy-eighth birthday celebration, 1912 (Montgomery 48-49, 104-05; Roberta Cheney, “From Rags to Riches,” in Western Writers of America 220-39; Moynihan, Rebel 194-95; P. Horner; Mulford 72-79).">32 of Spokane and Mrs. Jonathan Bourne<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_33_115" id="identifier_33_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lillian Elizabeth Wyatt Bourne: of Linn County; on November 28, 1893, in Chicago, married Jonathan Bourne, Jr., progressive Republican, friend of La Follette, U.S. Senate, 1907-13; left him in February, 1913, returning to Portland from Washington, D.C., and filed for divorce in April, charging verbal and physical abuse (Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1913; Pomeroy).">33, of Oregon, for help to meet my debt at bank34, each of whom sent $100. <Mr.> W. M. Davis<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_35_115" id="identifier_35_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Probably William Melvin “Pike” Davis (1866-1939): attorney; born Edgar County, Illinois; son of William L. and Hartly Irene Minor Davis; family moved to Missouri when he was 3, settling in Pike County; graduated Louisiana, Missouri, high school, 1886; studied law while working as watchman in planing mill; admitted to Missouri bar, 1887 or 1888; city attorney, Louisiana, Missouri; came to Oregon and admitted to bar, August, 1891; deputy city attorney, Portland, 1896-1902; founder, Multnomah Bar Association; president, Oregon Bar Association, 1933; active in Republican politics; died in February, at 73, after three-month illness (History of the Bench 120; Oregonian 2 Mar. 1939; Oregon Daily Journal 28 Feb. 1939).">35, President of the Men’s Equal Suffrage League, also contributed liberally and our State membership dues paid the balance, with accruing interest. Meanwhile, our Executive Committee, not knowing these bequests were coming, held a meeting for the same purpose, with Dr. Viola M. Coe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_36_115" id="identifier_36_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting), O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608).">36, acting president, in the Chair, where a fund was raised which came in most appropriately toward meeting other expenses of the State Campaign.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_37_115" id="identifier_37_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="OR renders this sentence: “Meanwhile, not knowing these bequests were coming, a meeting was arranged, with Dr. Viola May Coe presiding, at which a fund was raised for the same purpose by the state executive committee, which came in most appropriately as an aid in meeting other expenses of the state campaign.”">37 I am stating these facts in response to the personal request of <our risen club member and coadjutor,> Mrs. Lord, who asked it of me at our last personal interview, when I was confined to my bed, and it did not seem possible that I should survive her, though she believed her own demise38 was imminent <on account of heart trouble. Mrs. Lord was a woman of many attainments and many virtues. Her literary accomplishments were of a high order. Many of her historical writings will live long after the works of most of us are forgotten. Her beautiful residence was a rendezvous for men and women of literary attainment, who enjoyed the unbounded hospitality of her artistic home. She was a chief factor in building and sustaining the first Christian Science Church at The Dalles, and a promoter and assistant in all things pertaining to the up-building of her town.> Our next and last important and useful member of the Federation whose translation39 it is my melancholy duty to report for the year,40 was Mrs. Martha A. Dalton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_41_115" id="identifier_41_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Martha Angeline Cardwell Barnhart Dalton (1839-1913): daughter of William Lee and Mary Ann Biddle Cardwell, who crossed plains from Jacksonville, Illinois, 1852, settling in Marysville (Corvallis), then moving to Portland, 1858; married December 28, 1854, to James B. Barnhart at Corvallis; married Frank Dalton of Lewiston, Idaho Territory, July 24, 1866; music teacher; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; frequent member of library and chautauqua committees of Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs; sister of Dr. James Robert Cardwell, Portland’s first dentist; died in September (Weekly Oregonian 13 Jan. 1855; Daily Oregonian 26 July 1866; Moynihan, Rebel 84; Writer’s Project; Scrapbooks #21: 13, #44: 105, 155, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Gaston, Portland 387-92). Scott Duniway comments: “She remained a member of the Executive Committee of the State Equal Suffrage Association up to the time of her death; and, though a prohibitionist, always agreed with my efforts to hold the Suffrage Movement aloof from affiliation with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, after it got into politics” (Path Breaking 217).">41, a charter member of the Portland Woman’s Club, and for seven or eight consecutive years the chairman of the Federation Headquarters at the annual meetings of the Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association. Mrs. Dalton, in collaboration with42 Mrs. M. J. Foster<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_43_115" id="identifier_43_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Martha Jane Gray Foster (?-1881); daughter of James Gray, who emigrated to Oregon, 1850, merchant, wheat and flour miller who helped build Oregon Cascade Wagon Road and Oregon and California Railroad; she crossed plains, 1852, residing at Union Point, Linn County; first wife of James Hearst Foster; married 1853; located on donation land claim near Albany after marriage; five children (Vertical File, “Genealogy–Foster, James Hearst Family”, OR Hist. Soc.).">43 <, long since deceased,> and myself, met at my home in Albany in 1871, <shortly before my removal to Portland to establish The New Northwest,” and formed the nucleus of the State Equal Suffrage Association, of which Mrs. Dalton was an official member up to the time of her passing away.44 <These reminiscences naturally lead us to ask each other “what about the future life”? Happily I know that every one of the departed Club women I have named was a firm believer in eternal existence. They were all aware, as I am, that: “Heaven is nearer than mortals think, When they look with trembling dread At the misty future that stretches on From the silent home of the dead. ‘Tis no lone isle in a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where the loved ones who are called away Must go to return no more. No! heaven is near us; the misty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we see not the glorious angel bands On the shores of eternity. I know when the silver cord is loosed; When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be, To the realms of endless day.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_45_115" id="identifier_45_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This unattributed poem, entitled “Heaven,” was collected in The Changed Cross, and Other Religious Poems, compiled from newspapers and magazines by Anson Davies Fitz Randolph, in 1865 (50). Scott Duniway shortens the original, which is as follows: Oh! Heaven is nearer than mortals think, When they look with a trembling dread At the misty future that stretches on, From the silent home of the dead. ‘Tis no lone isle on a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where the lovely ones who are called away Must go to return no more. No, heaven is near us; the mighty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we cannot see the angel bands, On the shores of eternity. The eye that shuts in a dying hour Will open the next in bliss; The welcome will sound in the heavenly world, Ere the farewell is hushed in this. We pass from the clasp of mourning friends, To the arms of the loved and lost, And those smiling faces will greet us there, Which on earth we have valued most. Yet oft in the hours of holy thought, To the thirsting soul is given That power to pierce through the mist of sense, To the beauteous scenes of heaven. Then very near seem its pearly gates, And sweetly its harpings fall; Till the soul is restless to soar away, And longs for the angel’s call. I know when the silver cord is loosed, When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be, To the realms of endless day. Abigail’s abridged version had appeared previously in her 1905 novel, From the West to the West (129-30), and in her address before the Oregon Pioneer Association the preceding June.">45 > I do not expect, or hope, to be with you in the body at another annual meeting, but I intend always to meet with you in spirit and in love. Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than to announce the fact that the Woman’s Club movement has at last accomplished the primal object<–the enfranchisement of women–>for which it was created in the Pacific Northwest by Mrs. H. H.46 Stuart, the mother of clubs. <When Mrs. Sarah A. Evans<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cgreeting-and-reminiscence%e2%80%9d-october-6-1913/#footnote_47_115" id="identifier_47_115" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215).">47, the faithful and able presiding officer of this Federation took the chair eight years ago, we had less than a dozen affiliated clubs to call upon for assistance. Today we have sixty Clubs in the Federation, all working in harmony, along the lines of social, domestic, educational, philanthropic and civic improvements, giving tangible proof of her executive ability and your loyalty. Her formative work is finished. Whether she may or may not be chosen to again succeed herself, her arduous labors as a pioneer are completed. As voters, we are now in a position to accomplish many reforms for which, prior to November 5, 1912, we could only plead. New duties and responsibilities are upon us. Let us not forget to help the Club women of other states who are yet to attain the power to which we have risen; and above all, let us not forget the day of reckoning awaiting every one of us in the land of souls, toward which we are all hastening, as we “Nightly pitch our moving tents, A day’s march nearer home.”48 > NOTES 212; see also About Scott Duniway n. 21. “Eminent Women I Have Met” n. 3. Some corroboration comes from Sara Bard Field (1882-1974), a renowned poet, Christian socialist, and third-generation suffragist (also companion and eventual wife of Charles Erskine Scott Wood), who, in her late twenties, became the state organizer for the successful 1912 campaign. She personally was not keen on the clubs because they tended to study “piffling” things. In hindsight, however, she thought they had been “a help” in promoting woman suffrage, and in a “right on the surface,” not even “sub rosa” way (229, 240). Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbooks, 1912-13 and 1913-14, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Scrapbook #2, Abigail Scott Duniway Papers; Morning Oregonian 7 Oct. 1913. The typescript from which this speech is taken is undated. All evidence, external and internal, points to this dating, with one puzzling exception (the Oregonian’s story on October 7 is dated September 6, but the month is clearly erroneous, not confounding): Scott Duniway refers to the “late” Heppie L. Ford Spalding. Path Breaking, published in 1914, does the same (213, 215-16). However, Ford Spalding did not die until March 26, 1915, following “an illness of several years” (infra, n. 16). Less-than-convincing explanations might be that, as an aging “rheumatic cripple” with limited access to “mortuary statistics,” as she confides here, Scott Duniway was misinformed; or that she was confusing Ford Spalding’s death with the latter’s husband’s, in 1905; or that, when her friend removed to the sanitarium, Scott Duniway thought she had died. In any event, Abigail is wildly wrong. She would live for almost exactly two more years; on the circumstances of her death, see Moynihan, Rebel 218. 212-17. Georgia (Georgiana) Slocum Smith (?-1911): pioneer woman’s club leader in Oregon; founder, Hood River Woman’s Club; of Woodstock, Illinois; her father a staunch Democrat; attended Lombard University, Galesburg; married Ezra Leonard Smith, of Tazewell County, ardent Republican and also Lombard student, following Lincoln’s first inauguration, March 4, 1861; went to California immediately, then to Washington Territory, 1867, then to Hood River, March 1, 1876; well known for charity work with Native Americans of mid-Columbia Valley; instrumental in establishing Hood River county library; Unitarian; five daughters, one son (History of the Pacific Northwest 565-66; Sunday Oregonian 23 Jan. 1921, 30 Jan. 1921; Fred Lockley, “In Earlier Days,” Oregon Daily Journal 27 Aug. 1913; Sunset, the Pacific Monthly 29 (Oct. 1912): 439-41). Adapted from “On the Death of Joseph Rodman Drake,” by Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867). Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). OR inserts “in Olympia in 1871″ Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart (1839-1902): Washington suffragist inspired by Anthony’s and Scott Duniway’s 1871 visit to territorial legislature; chair, Washington Territory Board of Immigration, c. 1875-80; prominent clubwoman; founder, on March 10, 1883, and first president of Woman’s Club of Olympia (first woman’s club in Washington and second on Pacific Coast); chair, Constitution Committee, Washington State Federation of Woman’s Clubs organizing convention, September, 1896; treasurer, State Federation, 1898; wife of Robert G. Stuart; spoke at organizing meeting of Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895, becoming member, 1899; died at 62 in San Francisco, January 6 (M. Andrews 7; Beard 63; Croly 1132-34, 1144-46, 1149; Haarsager 59, 135, 191; “Third [sic: Fourth] Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 16, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Library Association of Portland Newspaper Index microfiche, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project). Clara E. Pottle Sylvester (1823-?): born Deer Isle, Maine; came to Olympia in 1854 as wife of Edmund Sylvester (1821-1887), Eastport, Maine, native who came to Oregon, 1843, living in Astoria and Portland before moving to Chambers Prairie, Washington, 1846; upon death of partner Levi Lathrop Smith, 1848, Sylvester acquired claim on waterfront at Budd Inlet; following failed trip to California goldfields, 1849, he platted claim, founding city of Olympia; following his death, she moved to San Diego, California (“Our People”; “Our People, continued“; “Clara E. Sylvester (Pottle)“). The Sylvesters erected the showplace of early Olympia, an Italianate home that was the largest in the city, along Capitol Way between Seventh and Eighth Streets, facing the water. Clara hosted the first meeting of the Woman’s Club there in 1883 and housed many visiting suffragists during the fight of Washington women for the right to vote (“Historic Preservation Assessment and Action Plan” Sec. III: 25). Because her father had been among the early settlers on Puget Sound in 1854, before returning to Oregon in the wake of hostilities with the natives, Abigail was welcomed by pioneer friends during her travels and was “frequently entertained” by the Sylvesters and others (Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 101). Abigail crossed out “prohibition” and substituted “politics” here. OR inserts “for a women’s club as outlined by Mrs. Stuart.” OR substitutes “leading suffragist” Hephzibah (Heppie) Locke Ford Spaulding (or Spalding) (1840?-1915): daughter of Simeon Ford of Boston; married William Wallace Spaulding (1839-1905), who made his fortune in stock raising and meat packing, 1861; came to Portland, fall, 1862; member, First Unitarian Church; active in charity, especially Children’s Home in south Portland; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; died March 26, at 75, in sanitarium after “an illness of several years” (Spalding 769; Scott, History of Portland 628-29; Writer’s Project; Morning Oregonian 27 Mar. 1915; Hines 525-26). On January 14, 1896 (First Annual Report). OR adds “, which I did at that meeting” Adapted from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s (1803-1882) “The Problem.” OR begins this sentence “After the death of Mrs. Smith the” Myrtle Evalyne Pease Hatfield (1873-1913): born Newton, Iowa; daughter of Clinton W. (1839-1913) and Margaret A. Pease; came to Oregon with parents, 1899; taught school in Albany for five years, c. 1904, then two years in rural sections, then three years in Mt. Tabor; resigned to take position with Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society, traveling throughout state “looking after neglected children, often undergoing great hardship and privation”; corresponding secretary, O.S.E.S.A., 1906-11; married Charles Hatfield, retired Forest Grove merchant, October 4, 1911. She died on Friday, March 14, 1913, after suffering for three or four days from a severe cold, and complaining of pain in her back and sides. However, she appeared to have rebounded shortly before her breathing stopped. Despite the suddenness of her death under “peculiar circumstances,” a coroner’s inquest found nothing abnormal and attributed her death to “apnoae,” contributing causes unknown (Forest Grove Press 20 Mar. 1913; Washington County News Times 20 Mar. 1913; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 215; cf. Springsteen, who says she was born in Nebraska in 1874). OR substitutes “late” Interestingly, Abigail’s account in Path Breaking ranks Pease Hatfield second in importance, not to Stuart, but to “my unaspiring self” (215)! For the material in <>, OR substitutes “The memory of Mrs. Spalding” Julia Heyman Bauer (1843?-1913): linguist and teacher, speaking seven languages fluently; born Buchsweiler (Alsace-Lorraine), France; educated Paris; resided Portland; married Jacques Bauer, merchant, April 14, 1864; moved to Walla Walla, establishing home on Alder near Fifth, which became “center of belles lettres” for that part of Washington; began teaching languages and needle work to officers at Fort Walla Walla, their families, and other residents; professor, modern languages, Whitman College, 1882; returned to Portland upon husband’s death, 1890; leader, department of English literature, Portland Woman’s Club, studying Shakespeare; authored dictionary in Volapuk (universal language invented by Johann Schleyer, 1877) which appeared at Chicago Exposition, 1893, and for which she received Doctor’s degree; four daughters–Emilie Frances, celebrated writer, composer, Minnie, Flora, Marion, also writer, musician; one son, Cecil, whom she tutored until he was 13 and who entered law school at Eugene, 1888; died July 16, at 70, following year’s illness; Bauer became Scott Duniway’s long-time neighbor, residing at 290 Clay St. (Morning Oregonian 17 July 1913; Sunday Oregonian 20 July 1913; Bowden 105-06; First Annual Report 4; “The First Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club, 1896-7” 11, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; History of the Bench 86). Elizabeth Laughlin Lord (1841-1913): “with the possible exception of” Scott Duniway herself, “the best known of the pioneer women of Oregon”; born Missouri; daughter of William Catesby and Mary Jane Yeargain Laughlin, 1850 pioneers in The Dalles; on New Year’s Day, 1861, married Wintworth Lord (1832-1917), merchant, cattle- and sheep-man, and miller, who came to The Dalles from California, 1858; one of first proponents of suffrage in Oregon; vice-president, O.S.E.S.A., at death and “one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s most valuable aides”; president, Women’s Political Study club, a local suffrage society; First Reader, Christian Science Church of The Dalles; member, Sorosis; “a lady of marked literary taste and ability, and the author of a number of interesting articles and books,” including Reminiscences of Eastern Oregon, her diary of family’s overland journey and early years, 1903; “a woman of charming personality and of exceptionally brilliant mind even until the day of her death”; among fifty most outstanding people in history of Wasco County; died in August of heart trouble; two children, one who survived (McNeal 52, 65; Illustrated History of Central Oregon 278; Sunday Oregonian 4 Mar. 1917; Sarah Evans, “Women’s Clubs, Women’s Work,” Oregon Sunday Journal 20 Nov. 1904; Scrapbook #44: 87, #50: 86, OR Hist. Soc.; “Mrs. Lord is Called Suddenly,” Vertical File, “Biography-‘Lo’”, OR Hist. Soc.). In Path Breaking, Abigail describes her as “a pioneer of the early ‘40s” (216). OR: “the” Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A.; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexner, “Shaw”; Linkugel). Wintworth Lord (1832-1917): merchant, cattle- and sheep-man, miller; came to The Dalles from California, 1858. OR: “I lay for many months between life and death on a bed where her malfeasance” OR adds “the” Mary (May) Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915): illegitimate child, born in Ohio coal country; raised by father and blind grandfather; awakened to woman’s rights by discussion between father and overnight guest, young lawyer William McKinley; at 18, married Frank Day; at 22, married coal miner Gilbert Munn; came to Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho as mining camp and boardinghouse cook, 1883; married third husband, Levi W. “Al” Hutton, railroad engineer, November 17, 1887; fierce defender of organized labor during disastrous “Rocky Mountain Revolution” in mines, 1892-99; wrote, published and promoted “the true story” of labor troubles, The Coeur d’Alenes: A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, 1900; met and campaigned in Idaho with Scott Duniway, 1895; Hercules silver and lead mine, in which she bought 1/34 interest in 1897 and which began producing in 1901, made her fabulously wealthy within ten years; Democratic nominee for state legislature, 1904; joined N.A.W.S.A. and attended first national convention, in Portland, 1905; moved to Spokane, 1906, joining Susan B. Anthony and Scott Duniway in campaigning for suffrage in Washington, first working and then clashing with Emma Smith DeVoe over tactics, eventually splitting Washington Equal Suffrage Association during N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909; ardent Democrat and William Jennings Bryan supporter; first woman delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1912; noted philanthropist, especially Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, Spokane Charities Commission, and Hutton Settlement for orphaned and unwanted children; large, uncouth woman “with a questionable past and a flamboyant nature who was anathema to many other suffragists,” nonetheless Scott Duniway’s “close friend and disciple”; Scott Duniway rode in Thomas Flyer that Arkwright Hutton decorated and entered in Portland Rose Festival, 1897, and Arkwright Hutton was invited guest on platform for Scott Duniway’s seventy-eighth birthday celebration, 1912 (Montgomery 48-49, 104-05; Roberta Cheney, “From Rags to Riches,” in Western Writers of America 220-39; Moynihan, Rebel 194-95; P. Horner; Mulford 72-79). Lillian Elizabeth Wyatt Bourne: of Linn County; on November 28, 1893, in Chicago, married Jonathan Bourne, Jr., progressive Republican, friend of La Follette, U.S. Senate, 1907-13; left him in February, 1913, returning to Portland from Washington, D.C., and filed for divorce in April, charging verbal and physical abuse (Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1913; Pomeroy). OR: “my debt due at the bank for making the campaign” Probably William Melvin “Pike” Davis (1866-1939): attorney; born Edgar County, Illinois; son of William L. and Hartly Irene Minor Davis; family moved to Missouri when he was 3, settling in Pike County; graduated Louisiana, Missouri, high school, 1886; studied law while working as watchman in planing mill; admitted to Missouri bar, 1887 or 1888; city attorney, Louisiana, Missouri; came to Oregon and admitted to bar, August, 1891; deputy city attorney, Portland, 1896-1902; founder, Multnomah Bar Association; president, Oregon Bar Association, 1933; active in Republican politics; died in February, at 73, after three-month illness (History of the Bench 120; Oregonian 2 Mar. 1939; Oregon Daily Journal 28 Feb. 1939). Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting), O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608). OR renders this sentence: “Meanwhile, not knowing these bequests were coming, a meeting was arranged, with Dr. Viola May Coe presiding, at which a fund was raised for the same purpose by the state executive committee, which came in most appropriately as an aid in meeting other expenses of the state campaign.” OR: “death” Probably “transition” is intended. For “whose . . .year,” OR substitutes “to pass” Martha Angeline Cardwell Barnhart Dalton (1839-1913): daughter of William Lee and Mary Ann Biddle Cardwell, who crossed plains from Jacksonville, Illinois, 1852, settling in Marysville (Corvallis), then moving to Portland, 1858; married December 28, 1854, to James B. Barnhart at Corvallis; married Frank Dalton of Lewiston, Idaho Territory, July 24, 1866; music teacher; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; frequent member of library and chautauqua committees of Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs; sister of Dr. James Robert Cardwell, Portland’s first dentist; died in September (Weekly Oregonian 13 Jan. 1855; Daily Oregonian 26 July 1866; Moynihan, Rebel 84; Writer’s Project; Scrapbooks #21: 13, #44: 105, 155, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Gaston, Portland 387-92). Scott Duniway comments: “She remained a member of the Executive Committee of the State Equal Suffrage Association up to the time of her death; and, though a prohibitionist, always agreed with my efforts to hold the Suffrage Movement aloof from affiliation with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, after it got into politics” (Path Breaking 217). OR inserts “the late” Martha Jane Gray Foster (?-1881); daughter of James Gray, who emigrated to Oregon, 1850, merchant, wheat and flour miller who helped build Oregon Cascade Wagon Road and Oregon and California Railroad; she crossed plains, 1852, residing at Union Point, Linn County; first wife of James Hearst Foster; married 1853; located on donation land claim near Albany after marriage; five children (Vertical File, “Genealogy–Foster, James Hearst Family”, OR Hist. Soc.). For “passing away,” OR substitutes “death.” This meeting actually occurred in November, 1870 (“San Francisco County Woman Suffrage Association“). This unattributed poem, entitled “Heaven,” was collected in The Changed Cross, and Other Religious Poems, compiled from newspapers and magazines by Anson Davies Fitz Randolph, in 1865 (50). Scott Duniway shortens the original, which is as follows: Oh! Heaven is nearer than mortals think, When they look with a trembling dread At the misty future that stretches on, From the silent home of the dead. ‘Tis no lone isle on a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where the lovely ones who are called away Must go to return no more. No, heaven is near us; the mighty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we cannot see the angel bands, On the shores of eternity. The eye that shuts in a dying hour Will open the next in bliss; The welcome will sound in the heavenly world, Ere the farewell is hushed in this. We pass from the clasp of mourning friends, To the arms of the loved and lost, And those smiling faces will greet us there, Which on earth we have valued most. Yet oft in the hours of holy thought, To the thirsting soul is given That power to pierce through the mist of sense, To the beauteous scenes of heaven. Then very near seem its pearly gates, And sweetly its harpings fall; Till the soul is restless to soar away, And longs for the angel’s call. I know when the silver cord is loosed, When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be, To the realms of endless day. Abigail’s abridged version had appeared previously in her 1905 novel, From the West to the West (129-30), and in her address before the Oregon Pioneer Association the preceding June. OR: “A. H. H.” Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215). Adapted from “At Home in Heaven,” by James Montgomery (1771-1884).
OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 19, 1913
This is the fourth speech in this collection that Scott Duniway delivered to the association, in which she and her family (pioneers of 1852) had been active for many, many years. It also is the first that was delivered after Oregon women were enfranchised in 1912. The occasion was the association’s forty-first annual reunion, at […]
This is the fourth speech in this collection that Scott Duniway delivered to the association, in which she and her family (pioneers of 1852) had been active for many, many years. It also is the first that was delivered after Oregon women were enfranchised in 1912. The occasion was the association’s forty-first annual reunion, at which “something over 900 white haired men and women, Oregon’s trail blazers, held a campfire meeting in the Masonic Temple” in Portland; although Abigail would turn 79 in four months, she was a comparative youngster in a crowd featuring many celebrants in their eighties and nineties. The reunion was a day-long affair. First, the pioneers gathered at the Oregon Historical Society and walked (reportedly, only a few of the feeblest rode in the automobiles that had been arranged) through a steady drizzle (“scorning umbrellas”) to the courthouse plaza for a group photograph. Then there were meetings, speeches of welcome, and music. A banquet was given in the Armory by the Women’s Auxiliary. That evening, new officers were elected, resolutions were adopted, including one petitioning the legislature to mark the old Oregon Trail, Mrs. Sarah J. Hill of St. Johns was named “mother queen,” and the campfire program began. Presided over by Col. Robert A. Miller, there were more musical selections and speeches from notables like Cyrus Walker, son of Elkanah and Mary Richardson Walker; former Governor T. T. Geer; and Dr. Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair, the first woman physician on the Pacific Coast, who came overland in the Applegate wagon train of 1843. Also delivering a fittingly nostalgic campfire talk, “five minutes, hot from the skillet, selected from the pioneers present, preference given to the women,” was Abigail. The newspapers reported that, even though called upon without notice, she “cloth[ed] her thoughts in well chosen words” and made “the most beautiful speech in her long career as a speaker.” The text is taken from a five-page manuscript in Mss 432 – Abigail Jane (Scott) Duniway, Misc. Papers, OR Hist. Soc.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-19-1913/#footnote_1_113" id="identifier_1_113" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="For this and other reasons, the text may be an extemporaneous speech committed “in part” to paper after the event; or Abigail might have anticipated an opportunity to speak “spontaneously.” For reports of the event, see Transactions of the Forty-First; Oregon Journal 20 June 1913.">1 At its end, Abigail added: “Col. R. A. Miller said, when Mrs. Duniway had finished, that he had often heard her speak, but had never heard her do so well before. To which the lady replied ‘That’s because you never heard me speak before as a free woman.’ The audience applauded to the echo.” Mr. Chairman, brother and sister Pioneers; dear friends and fellow citizens: Looking backward through the receded years, my memory sees the dim old Oregon Trail, with long double rows of slowly moving oxen, the motive powers that propel the jolting and careening ships of the desert, freighted with human beings in every stage of development, from tiny infancy to hoary age, all journeying on, toward the land of the setting sun. Again, I see men, women and children dropping by the wayside, while long arrays of covered wagons halt to bury in the solitudes of the desert, all that is mortal of their beloved dead. I see those that are yet alive, and remain in the body, move mournfully onward, in danger often, in peril always, not knowing how soon some unforeseen calamity will overtake them as they wend their way through lands infested by hostile savages, the air they breathe infested with the roadside stench of dead, decaying cattle, their own food running low, their clothing often worn to rags, their bodies racked by alternate heat and cold. On they wander, and yet on and on. The grandeur of the scenery falls upon their wearied senses; and as one after another of their beloved fellow travelers is laid away for that last long sleep among the haunts of wild beasts and wilder savages, they are left to wonder what it all is for? Dear friends, these trials are all for a purpose. As I looked into your fading eyes, and wrinkled faces as hundreds and hundreds of you took me by the hand today, I thought of those who have passed before us to Elysian fields, and rejoiced as I remembered that there is no death. Our dear ones are not dead, but risen. We shall surely meet again. “Heaven is nearer than mortals think. When they look with trembling dread at the misty future that stretches on From the silent home of the dead. “Tis no lone isle in a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where our loving ones who are called away Must go, to return no more. “No; Heaven is near us; the mighty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we see not the glorious angel bands On the shores of Eternity. “I know, when the silver cord is loosed, When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be To the realms of endless day.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-19-1913/#footnote_2_113" id="identifier_2_113" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This unattributed poem, entitled “Heaven,” was collected in The Changed Cross, and Other Religious Poems, compiled from newspapers and magazines by Anson Davies Fitz Randolph, in 1865 (50). Scott Duniway shortens the original, which is as follows: Oh! Heaven is nearer than mortals think, When they look with a trembling dread At the misty future that stretches on, From the silent home of the dead. ‘Tis no lone isle on a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where the lovely ones who are called away Must go to return no more. No, heaven is near us; the mighty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we cannot see the angel bands, On the shores of eternity. The eye that shuts in a dying hour Will open the next in bliss; The welcome will sound in the heavenly world, Ere the farewell is hushed in this. We pass from the clasp of mourning friends, To the arms of the loved and lost, And those smiling faces will greet us there, Which on earth we have valued most. Yet oft in the hours of holy thought, To the thirsting soul is given That power to pierce through the mist of sense, To the beauteous scenes of heaven. Then very near seem its pearly gates, And sweetly its harpings fall; Till the soul is restless to soar away, And longs for the angel’s call. I know when the silver cord is loosed, When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be, To the realms of endless day. Abigail’s abridged version had appeared previously in her 1905 novel, From the West to the West (129-30), and would appear again in her address before the State Federation of Woman’s Clubs the following October (“Greeting and Reminiscence“).">2 ***3 My beloved pioneer sisters, or daughters, as I love to call you, for am older than the most of you, as I look into your fading eyes and beaming faces, my heart goes out once more to the hospitable homes of many of you who welcomed me in my wanderings, when as a missionary of glad tidings, I preached to the people, heralding the day that dawned upon us at last, on the 12th of last November, when through the votes of men we were made equal with them one with another before the law. You will soon depart from us, to your modern homes, bearing memories, not only of the older times upon the plains and of the rude log cabins that first gave us shelter in the wilds of Old Oregon, the proud mother of Washington and Idaho, but you will carry away in your mental vision the tall sky scrapers of our modern city, emblems of a house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. It will not be long e*t farthest till the last of the Pioneers shall pass away. As I look into your faces, perhaps for the last time while in the body, I desire to assure you of the tender love I feel for one and all. May peace and love and ease and plenty crown your declining years, and may you live to come again and again to these reunions, where I intend to come to greet you, whether in the body or out of it, till the last one of us shall be gathered home. NOTES For this and other reasons, the text may be an extemporaneous speech committed “in part” to paper after the event; or Abigail might have anticipated an opportunity to speak “spontaneously.” For reports of the event, see Transactions of the Forty-First; Oregon Journal 20 June 1913. This unattributed poem, entitled “Heaven,” was collected in The Changed Cross, and Other Religious Poems, compiled from newspapers and magazines by Anson Davies Fitz Randolph, in 1865 (50). Scott Duniway shortens the original, which is as follows: Oh! Heaven is nearer than mortals think, When they look with a trembling dread At the misty future that stretches on, From the silent home of the dead. ‘Tis no lone isle on a boundless main, No brilliant but distant shore, Where the lovely ones who are called away Must go to return no more. No, heaven is near us; the mighty veil Of mortality blinds the eye, That we cannot see the angel bands, On the shores of eternity. The eye that shuts in a dying hour Will open the next in bliss; The welcome will sound in the heavenly world, Ere the farewell is hushed in this. We pass from the clasp of mourning friends, To the arms of the loved and lost, And those smiling faces will greet us there, Which on earth we have valued most. Yet oft in the hours of holy thought, To the thirsting soul is given That power to pierce through the mist of sense, To the beauteous scenes of heaven. Then very near seem its pearly gates, And sweetly its harpings fall; Till the soul is restless to soar away, And longs for the angel’s call. I know when the silver cord is loosed, When the veil is rent away, Not long and dark shall the passage be, To the realms of endless day. Abigail’s abridged version had appeared previously in her 1905 novel, From the West to the West (129-30), and would appear again in her address before the State Federation of Woman’s Clubs the following October (“Greeting and Reminiscence“). Half of a page has been removed here. It is not known whether this represents missing text or Abigail’s intentional editing.
OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 20, 1909
Midway through the “tax-paying women” suffrage campaign, the O.S.E.S.A. held its thirty-ninth anniversary meeting in the home of the late Senator Joseph Norton Dolph. Scott Duniway’s optimistic Presidential address attributes increasing success to “the aid of far-seeing and justice-loving men,” and the 1908 failure at the polls to “timid or selfish men” and “the debased […]
Midway through the “tax-paying women” suffrage campaign, the O.S.E.S.A. held its thirty-ninth anniversary meeting in the home of the late Senator Joseph Norton Dolph. Scott Duniway’s optimistic Presidential address attributes increasing success to “the aid of far-seeing and justice-loving men,” and the 1908 failure at the polls to “timid or selfish men” and “the debased and criminal classes.” She reiterates that suffrage advocates should steer clear of prohibition and, of course, warns women not to antagonize men. While these themes are staples in her repertoire, they are updated here to fit newer circumstances.1 By this time, the Women’s Social and Political Union had England in an uproar. For four years women had been demonstrating, sometimes smashing windows and committing arson, disrupting public meetings and Edwardian sensibilities. Often they were beaten and jailed. Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst formed the W.S.P.U. in 1903. Attempting to gain adherents among factory workers in Manchester and other textile centers, activists began holding outdoor meetings and interrupting government speakers at public gatherings to ask their position on suffrage. In 1905, Annie Kenney, a factory worker, and Emmeline’s daughter, Christabel, were “forcibly ejected” from a meeting for heckling Sir Edward Grey; bystanders and police then physically assaulted and arrested them. From then on, the W.S.P.U. “set about deliberately provoking violent police reprisals in order to embarrass party leaders to the point where they would feel compelled to do something about woman suffrage.” Eventually women began using violence themselves, throwing stones, breaking windows, pouring acid into mailboxes, and attacking members of the government with whips or their bare hands. Just months before Abigail’s speech, in July, an imprisoned suffragette named Marion Dunlop had refused to eat, insisting that she was a political prisoner. Fearing that she would starve and become a martyr, the authorities released her. But when other prisoners adopted the same strategy, the authorities–unwilling to release them all–brutally force-fed them, further fanning the flames of militancy.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_2_110" id="identifier_2_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Force-feeding also was dangerous. Goulden Pankhurst’s sister, Mary Goulden Clarke, would die of a broken blood vessel soon after having been force-fed at Holloway Prison in December, 1910. Thus, in 1912, Parliament would pass the infamous Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act, a.k.a. the Cat and Mouse Act, under which dangerously ill hunger strikers were released until they had regained their strength, and then rearrested. Under its terms, Goulden Pankhurst, 54 at the time, would be imprisoned twelve times that year (Flexner, Century 250-51; Marina Warner, “The Agitator Emmeline Pankhurst”; “Hunger Strikes“). For what Eleanor Flexner calls “a balanced account of the suffrage movement in Great Britain” (Century 365 [n. 6]), see Ray Strachey, The Cause (London, 1928).">2 Although she, of course, sympathized with the suffragettes’ objective and was repulsed by the Liberal government’s strong-armed response, Scott Duniway nonetheless opposed such drastic tactics (both in Britain and as they would be imported into the U.S. by Alice Paul). If anything would antagonize men, surely these militant tactics would!<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_3_110" id="identifier_3_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Four years later, she again would condemn the English suffragettes as “too drastic”, warning: “Women can lead men, all right, but they must keep the strings out of sight. You can’t go after them hammer and tongs. If you do, they will rebel. One trouble with the woman suffrage movement is that it is being engineered by professional old maids” (Morning Oregonian 10 Nov. 1913).">3 In condemning them here, Abigail also manages pointedly to scold her nemesis, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_4_110" id="identifier_4_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C. after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”).">4, who had spoken earlier in the evening “emotionally and sentimentally on behalf of the English suffragettes.” Also noteworthy is her discussion of the increasing support for equal suffrage among wealthy women. Scott Duniway’s pioneer temperament had little patience for the idle rich; her lavish praise of the Pacific Northwest as a region where freedom and liberty were uniquely valued, and of the region’s women who, she always contended, had demonstrated that they had earned equal rights, was a not-too-subtle swipe at those in other regions who had earned nothing themselves, yet would deny liberty to those who had. Similarly, her constant cry that “taxation without representation is tyranny” invoked the American War of Independence but, also, obliquely raised the topic of the relationship between the working and moneyed classes. Scott Duniway believed that a more conservative suffrage proposal would be more popular than previous attempts and thus stood a better chance of passage; but framing the campaign in terms of the rights of “tax-paying” women also reveals her philosophical privileging of merit. Finally, in combination with her tantalizingly brief suggestion here that women’s work in the home should be wage-earning and organized like a business, this speech adds insight into Scott Duniway’s economic beliefs and the role of class therein.5 The text appears in the Sunday Oregonian of December 5, 1909. It is a fitting and noteworthy coincidence that the officers and members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association should assemble with so many of our living co-workers and friends under this spacious roof, to enjoy the hospitalities of this historic home, erected and long occupied by our late lamented adviser and attorney, United States Senator Dolph<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_6_110" id="identifier_6_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135).">6, who, with the assistance of the late Honorable Solomon Hirsch<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_7_110" id="identifier_7_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1839-1902): born Wurtemburg, Germany; emigrated to Oregon, 1858; merchant in Dallas, 1858-61, Silverton, 1861-64, then Portland (founder and partner of Fleishner, Mayer & Co., wholesale dry goods firm); state legislature, 1872; state senate, 1874-85; missed by one vote (his own) being elected by legislature to U.S. Senate; U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1889-92; declined later diplomatic posts to both Constantinople and Brussels (Corning 115; Gaston, Portland 2: 144-49; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 164-69).">7 (who at one time also resided within these capacious walls) championed my first humble efforts in the State Legislature to secure the blessings of equal rights for the mothers of men, so long and so strongly denied us at the ballot box by the adverse votes of the sons of women. It has often been said by such women as Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_8_110" id="identifier_8_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (1853-1933): socialite and suffragist; born Mobile, Alabama; educated in France; moved to New York City in 1870s; married grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1875; divorced him on grounds of adultery following cruise to Calcutta, 1895; married Oliver Hazzard Perry Belmont, who had accompanied them on cruise, 1896; criticism of divorce and influence of Anna Howard Shaw contributed to her embrace of militant suffragism following Belmont’s death, 1908; brought English suffragist Christabel Pankhurst to U.S., 1914; executive board, Congressional Union and, after 1917, National Woman’s Party, to which she was elected President, 1921; represented N.W.P. at International Woman Suffrage Alliance convention, Paris, 1926 (Lasch).">8, Mrs. Clarence Mackay<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_9_110" id="identifier_9_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Katherine Alexander Duer Mackay Blake (1879-1930): Gilded Age socialite, author; born New York City; descendent of Catherine Alexander (“Lady Kitty”) and Col. William Alexander Duer, member of Continental Congress and Treasury official (appointed by Alexander Hamilton) whose insider speculation in bank stocks triggered crash of 1792; daughter of William Alexander Duer, lawyer, and Ellin Travers Duer; educated at home; married Clarence Hungerford Mackay, 1898, heir to John William Mackay’s silver fortune (co-discovered Bonanza mines, founded Bank of Nevada), and capitalist who developed cable and telegraph interests, eventually director, International Telephone and Telegraph; resided “Harbor Hill” (stone French chateau designed by Stanford White) on six hundred acres, Roslyn, Long Island; daughter Ellin was second wife of composer Irving Berlin; “beautiful, vivacious, determined and opinionated”; Roslyn Public School Board, 1905-10; founded Equal Franchise Society, 1909, contributed large sums, recruited many of New York’s most influential women; refused to let Society march in Fifth Ave. suffrage parades, 1910-11, favoring less combative theatrical pageants; reports circulated that Mrs. Joseph Augustus Blake, M.D., would file for divorce and sue her for damages, September, 1913; divorced Mackay, May, 1914; married Blake, November, 1914, one day after his divorce was final; lived in Paris during war, where he was chief American surgeon; divorced Blake, 1929 (he remarried–for third time–almost immediately); authored “Stone of Destiny,” 1903, “Some Letters,” 1917-18; contributed to North American Review, Harper’s, others; Episcopalian; member, Colony Club; died of pneumonia (New York Times 20 Apr. 1930; Who was Who 104, 763; Graham 39; Lumsden 99, 107; Rhoda Amon, “The Architect of Desire”; “Trinity Church History“; Kathy Larkin and Joyce Gabriel, “LI’s Rebels With a Cause”; “The New Netherlands Ancestors of Catherine Alexander Duer, the Wife of Clarence Hungerford Mackay”; “John William Mackay”; Brian Trumbone, “William Duer and the Crash of 1792”).">9 and many others who have recently joined our ranks, bringing with them the accessories of great wealth and high social position, that the question of why women want the ballot no longer needs agitation or argument. With women everywhere being driven from their homes to secure the gainful occupations without which a rapidly increasing number could have no homes at all to keep, it is indeed encouraging to see women of great wealth coming to the front and declaring, in the interest of the women working without salaries and on the farms, wives and mothers of the children of the land, that “taxation without representation is tyranny” for women just as it was for men in Revolutionary times, before women were compelled to engage in gainful occupations outside of home. Although few women in this new Far Western part of this great and growing Union are as yet the possessors or custodians of great wealth, and are therefore not in a position to come forward with open assistance in forwarding our enfranchisement, and whose gifts to the cause are for that reason accepted in secrecy, there are hundreds and hundreds of business and wage-earning women, in the professions and trades, who realize to their cost when payday comes that their salaries are from 5 to 25 per cent lower every month than the salaries received by voters for the same service. It is the rank and file of salary-earning women, as suffragists, who are aiding us with contributions to carry on the work, without which no modern organization could survive a twelvemonth. Nor is this assistance and co-operation confined to women. Enrolled among our allies are our United States Senators, Congressmen, state officers, many ministers, judges, lawyers, teachers, editors, merchants, physicians and a constantly increasing army of farmers, laborers, mechanics and philanthropic thinkers, who see not only the justice of our demand for “no taxation without representation” and “no government without consent,” but the absolute necessity of our enfranchisement if we would conserve the perpetuity of the home and the government which rests upon it. The progress toward equality before the law, which women, by the aid of far-seeing and justice-loving men, have already achieved, except at general elections (where we are handicapped by many votes of timid or selfish men, and by the votes of the debased and criminal classes) is most significant. When Dr. Woods Hutchinson<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_10_110" id="identifier_10_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1862-1930): born of Quaker stock in England; emigrated to Iowa, 1874; Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, A.B., 1880, A.M., 1883; medical degree, University of Michigan, 1884; married Cornelia M. Williams, 1893; practiced in Des Moines until 1896; professorships in pathology at Iowa State University, 1891-96, University of Buffalo, 1896-1900, and London Medical Graduates’ College, 1899-1900; state health officer of Oregon, 1903-05; moved to New York, becoming author of books and syndicated articles in popular press, conveying medical information, particularly about preventive medicine; president, American Academy of Medicine, 1915-16 (Preble; Who was Who 614).">10 was in Oregon he was a violent opponent of equal rights for women, chiefly, as he is said to have stated, because, as he supposed, all women would vote for prohibition. If the learned doctor had been as well acquainted with the women suffragists as he ought to have been, he would have known that, while all good women are naturally in favor of sane and sober husbands and sons, we are quite as distinctly divided in our opinions as to the proper methods of dealing with the liquor traffic as men are. The prohibition propaganda rages more violently and with effects more significant in states where equal suffrage is prohibited than in the four states where it exists. It is a question wholly without the pale of the suffrage movement; yet such are the inconsistencies of human nature that men who ought to know better, and who differ radically as to the merits and demerits of the liquor traffic, unite as a practical unit to prohibit the enfranchisement of women, being inspired by a common desire to indulge in the prohibition of liberty and justice for all the people, which finds its root in barbarism. That Dr. Hutchinson’s heart is all right toward women, and only needs touching in the proper place, is proven by his late utterances in prominent magazines, and favorably commented upon in leading newspapers, wherein, without seeming to realize the cause of women’s uprising and discontent, he graphically portrays the hapless lot of the disenfranchised sex in hundreds of thousands of homes–a lot which, if men as a class could only comprehend it, would gradually adjust itself to improved conditions of home-making. Then child-bearing would be looked upon as a remunerative occupation, quite as important and far more necessary than raising pigs or poultry, horses or cattle. So long as men are pensioned for having been enlisted in the Army, whether they have smelled gunpowder in battle or not, and women imperil their lives to give birth to soldiers, to be killed in battles against the mothers’ protest, why wonder at women’s constantly growing discontent with the unequal conditions that so vitally concern them, in which they are allowed no voice? A significant factor in the growth of the equal-rights movement has come to the front in the leading newspapers and magazines, which, although paying far more homage than is due to the opposition of a few notoriety-seeking women, who, like the worm in the fable, are vainly hoping to “eat us after we’re dead,” they do, as a rule, wind up their articles with irrefutable arguments in favor of votes for women. Among the more notable of the many men who thus espouse our cause is Justice Brewer<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_11_110" id="identifier_11_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="David Josiah Brewer (1837-1910): born Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey; American missionary parents brought him to U.S. at age 1; educated at Yale and Albany Law School; began practice, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1859; Kansas Supreme Court, 1870-84; U.S. circuit judge, 1884-89; appointed by Benjamin Harrison to Supreme Court, 1890-1910 (Who was Who 136).">11, of the United States Supreme Court, who, in a widely circulated article in a popular ladies’ magazine, says: Female suffrage will come. Not fully, at once, but by varying steps. Women’s education, her increasing familiarity with business and public affairs, will lead to it. And why not? The chief reply is the home. . . . In it woman must ever be the established queen. . . . But female suffrage (why doesn’t he call it woman suffrage?) will not debase the home or lessen its influence. On the other hand, it will introduce a refining and uplifting power and influence in our political life. It will not stop marriage. . . . The great natural laws of our being will always assert themselves. But woman, conscious of her ability to support herself, will demand true manhood in her husband. Children will come, but the glory of the home will not be in the number, but the quality, of the offspring. . . . To load a home with so many children that the mother cannot give to each the full blessing of a mother’s care is far worse than race suicide.12 There exists no longer any doubt in the mind of any reflecting man that woman suffrage will come. That it will and ought to come by safe, conservative steps is self-evident. Oregon women do not look with favor upon the militant or suffragette movement which originated in England under conditions not at all applicable here at the present time. We have faith in the justice and patriotism of Oregon men. Although there was a largely increased vote against in 1908 over the vote of 1906, caused by an influx of immigration from older states, the affirmative vote for full suffrage more than held its own. And we believe the men of Oregon will prove themselves wise enough, at the next general election, to consider discretion the better part of valor. Then by a strong vote and a vote all together for liberty and righteousness, they can allay all acts of violence such as have arisen in England, and by so doing prove themselves worthy of the pioneer mothers of the land, who helped them to hew out this mighty state from the unbroken wilderness. By so voting they will place themselves in the lead in their departure from conditions that will no longer class men and women as one, and the men as that one. Now for a concluding word to women, the unballoted and helpless watchers behind the ramparts of old conditions. You have an important, though inconspicuous, part to play in this great, bloodless drama. In the words of Carrie Chapman Catt<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1909/#footnote_13_110" id="identifier_13_110" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-1904, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63).">13, the gifted president of the Woman Suffragists of the World, “Don’t antagonize men. Meet their hoary arguments against justice for their mothers with womanly sweetness and smile, smile, smile.” Don’t imagine that you can ever make laws to govern men. All you can hope to do through the law of liberty, is to so elevate the standard of morality, through expanding opportunities for yourselves, that men will strive instinctively to meet, from within their own consciousnesses, the highest laws that are innate within even the lowliest and most depraved man or woman, and only await the soul of development under the laws of liberty and responsibility. Our platform is strictly nonpartisan and nonsectarian. It welcomes to its standard every Jew and Catholic, Protestant and Mormon, Christian Scientist, Spiritualist, Theosophist and Pagan who will support our plea against taxation without representation. It appeals for support at the polls to every Democrat, Republican, Prohibitionist, Socialist, Anti-Prohibitionist, Anarchist and Union Labor partisan. Every one of you has a right to express your own opinion at every convenient time and place. But not one of you has any right whatever to dictate metes and bounds, whether civil, religious or political, to the women who pay taxes to support the Government and are, equally with every man, amenable to its laws. Men and women are the two natural halves of the great equation of humanity. To subjugate one half of humanity to the will of the other half, whether through bodily enslavement or the confiscation of the means of subsistence, is usurpation of individual rights for which men alone are responsible. The remedy lies in their ballots, and to them alone can we look for its application through votes for our enfranchisement. NOTES Indeed, this address generally sounds more “modern” than earlier ones; consider, for example, her comments about equal pay for equal work. Force-feeding also was dangerous. Goulden Pankhurst’s sister, Mary Goulden Clarke, would die of a broken blood vessel soon after having been force-fed at Holloway Prison in December, 1910. Thus, in 1912, Parliament would pass the infamous Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act, a.k.a. the Cat and Mouse Act, under which dangerously ill hunger strikers were released until they had regained their strength, and then rearrested. Under its terms, Goulden Pankhurst, 54 at the time, would be imprisoned twelve times that year (Flexner, Century 250-51; Marina Warner, “The Agitator Emmeline Pankhurst”; “Hunger Strikes“). For what Eleanor Flexner calls “a balanced account of the suffrage movement in Great Britain” (Century 365 [n. 6]), see Ray Strachey, The Cause (London, 1928). Four years later, she again would condemn the English suffragettes as “too drastic”, warning: “Women can lead men, all right, but they must keep the strings out of sight. You can’t go after them hammer and tongs. If you do, they will rebel. One trouble with the woman suffrage movement is that it is being engineered by professional old maids” (Morning Oregonian 10 Nov. 1913). (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C. after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”). See also “The Destiny of Our Republic.” Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135). (1839-1902): born Wurtemburg, Germany; emigrated to Oregon, 1858; merchant in Dallas, 1858-61, Silverton, 1861-64, then Portland (founder and partner of Fleishner, Mayer & Co., wholesale dry goods firm); state legislature, 1872; state senate, 1874-85; missed by one vote (his own) being elected by legislature to U.S. Senate; U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1889-92; declined later diplomatic posts to both Constantinople and Brussels (Corning 115; Gaston, Portland 2: 144-49; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 164-69). Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (1853-1933): socialite and suffragist; born Mobile, Alabama; educated in France; moved to New York City in 1870s; married grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1875; divorced him on grounds of adultery following cruise to Calcutta, 1895; married Oliver Hazzard Perry Belmont, who had accompanied them on cruise, 1896; criticism of divorce and influence of Anna Howard Shaw contributed to her embrace of militant suffragism following Belmont’s death, 1908; brought English suffragist Christabel Pankhurst to U.S., 1914; executive board, Congressional Union and, after 1917, National Woman’s Party, to which she was elected President, 1921; represented N.W.P. at International Woman Suffrage Alliance convention, Paris, 1926 (Lasch). Katherine Alexander Duer Mackay Blake (1879-1930): Gilded Age socialite, author; born New York City; descendent of Catherine Alexander (“Lady Kitty”) and Col. William Alexander Duer, member of Continental Congress and Treasury official (appointed by Alexander Hamilton) whose insider speculation in bank stocks triggered crash of 1792; daughter of William Alexander Duer, lawyer, and Ellin Travers Duer; educated at home; married Clarence Hungerford Mackay, 1898, heir to John William Mackay’s silver fortune (co-discovered Bonanza mines, founded Bank of Nevada), and capitalist who developed cable and telegraph interests, eventually director, International Telephone and Telegraph; resided “Harbor Hill” (stone French chateau designed by Stanford White) on six hundred acres, Roslyn, Long Island; daughter Ellin was second wife of composer Irving Berlin; “beautiful, vivacious, determined and opinionated”; Roslyn Public School Board, 1905-10; founded Equal Franchise Society, 1909, contributed large sums, recruited many of New York’s most influential women; refused to let Society march in Fifth Ave. suffrage parades, 1910-11, favoring less combative theatrical pageants; reports circulated that Mrs. Joseph Augustus Blake, M.D., would file for divorce and sue her for damages, September, 1913; divorced Mackay, May, 1914; married Blake, November, 1914, one day after his divorce was final; lived in Paris during war, where he was chief American surgeon; divorced Blake, 1929 (he remarried–for third time–almost immediately); authored “Stone of Destiny,” 1903, “Some Letters,” 1917-18; contributed to North American Review, Harper’s, others; Episcopalian; member, Colony Club; died of pneumonia (New York Times 20 Apr. 1930; Who was Who 104, 763; Graham 39; Lumsden 99, 107; Rhoda Amon, “The Architect of Desire”; “Trinity Church History“; Kathy Larkin and Joyce Gabriel, “LI’s Rebels With a Cause”; “The New Netherlands Ancestors of Catherine Alexander Duer, the Wife of Clarence Hungerford Mackay”; “John William Mackay”; Brian Trumbone, “William Duer and the Crash of 1792”). (1862-1930): born of Quaker stock in England; emigrated to Iowa, 1874; Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, A.B., 1880, A.M., 1883; medical degree, University of Michigan, 1884; married Cornelia M. Williams, 1893; practiced in Des Moines until 1896; professorships in pathology at Iowa State University, 1891-96, University of Buffalo, 1896-1900, and London Medical Graduates’ College, 1899-1900; state health officer of Oregon, 1903-05; moved to New York, becoming author of books and syndicated articles in popular press, conveying medical information, particularly about preventive medicine; president, American Academy of Medicine, 1915-16 (Preble; Who was Who 614). David Josiah Brewer (1837-1910): born Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey; American missionary parents brought him to U.S. at age 1; educated at Yale and Albany Law School; began practice, Leavenworth, Kansas, 1859; Kansas Supreme Court, 1870-84; U.S. circuit judge, 1884-89; appointed by Benjamin Harrison to Supreme Court, 1890-1910 (Who was Who 136). This article probably was “Woman Suffrage: Its Present Position and Its Future,” Ladies’ World 30 (1909). Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-1904, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63).
OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 11, 1909
At the business portion of the Association’s thirty-seventh annual session, meeting in the Masonic Temple, a momentous gift was presented to the Oregon Historical Society. Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright1, “an honored pioneer of 1845,” conveyed “a tract of land on Clatsop Beach, near the Seaside Hotel, at Seaside, upon which is situated the salt cairn […]
At the business portion of the Association’s thirty-seventh annual session, meeting in the Masonic Temple, a momentous gift was presented to the Oregon Historical Society. Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_1_108" id="identifier_1_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Oregon Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">1, “an honored pioneer of 1845,” conveyed “a tract of land on Clatsop Beach, near the Seaside Hotel, at Seaside, upon which is situated the salt cairn or furnace which was erected by Lewis and Clark, early in January, 1806, for the purpose of distilling salt from the ocean water to supply the needs of the company.”2 This property was “of great historical importance by reason of the fact that, so far as known, this salt cairn is the only physical evidence left of the presence of the Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition in the Oregon country.” The deed to this property was presented to Frederick V. Holman, president of the Society, by J. E. Majers, president of the Association. Following Holman’s short address expressing his appreciation, Scott Duniway “replied to Mr Holman, on behalf of Mrs. Cartwright, in a few felicitous remarks” that manage to insinuate an equal suffrage message into this ceremony. Of course, Abigail was active in other aspects of the reunion as well. Particularly “amusing” was a conversation with Cyrus H. Walker3, of Albany, “the oldest native son of white parents now living,” and Dr. Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair, “a pioneer of 1843,” that was conducted in the Chinook jargon language devised by early traders to do business with Native Americans.4 The text is taken from a three-page manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. In the early dawn of the Nineteenth Century, while yet this vast Pacific Empire was yet a wilderness, Sacajawea<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_5_108" id="identifier_5_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15).">5, an obscure Indian slave woman, bearing a man-child on her back, piloted an intrepid band of white explorers across this trackless continent to the surging shores of the Pacific seas. Half a century later Sarah Josepha Hale<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_6_108" id="identifier_6_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879): magazine editor; born Newport, New Hampshire; teacher, c. 1806-13; married attorney David Hale, 1813; five children; widowed in 1822, compelled by circumstances to open millinery and turned seriously to writing verse and fiction; became editor, Rev. John Lauris Blake’s Ladies’ Magazine, 1828, and moved to Boston; accepted most prevailing beliefs about “woman’s sphere,” but championed greater educational opportunities such as the female seminary movement and state normal schools for women; became editor, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1837, when Godey bought Ladies’ Magazine, combining it with his Lady’s Book, and moved to Philadelphia, where she continued to warn against militant woman’s rights ideas such as equality with men and suffrage, and tended to avoid controversial topics altogether; gradually came to accept some careers outside the home, including charity, missionary work, and medicine; supported property rights for married women; built Godey’s circulation to a record-breaking 150,000 by 1860; wrote “Mary had a little lamb” and other poems; her agitation responsible for Lincoln’s proclamation of a national Thanksgiving Day, October, 1864; fifty or so books attributed to her; announced retirement in December, 1877, issue, at age 90; died following April (Boyer, “Hale”; Mott 1: 583-84).">6 led a little band of women who saved Mount Vernon to the Nation as a perpetual shrine sacred to the memory of General Washington. In the early dawn of this Twentieth Century Sarah A. Evans<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_7_108" id="identifier_7_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pensylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis & Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215).">7 led a band of patriotic women who erected in enduring bronze a statue to the memory of the slave woman who, through the agency of Lewis<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_8_108" id="identifier_8_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146).">8 and Clark<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_9_108" id="identifier_9_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55).">9, discovered the Whole of Oregon.10 But to you, Charlotte M. Cartwright<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-11-1909/#footnote_11_108" id="identifier_11_108" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright (1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">11 belongs an honor of even farther reaching significance. Little recked you, when listening in your childhood’s days to the screaming of wild beasts or yells of wilder savages in the vicinity of your Oregon home, that the day was so near at hand when the primeval forest would be subdued by the iron horse, or the falls of the wild Willamette harnessed to electric energy–obedient to the will of man. Still less could you believe that this splendid Rose City of ours would spring like magic from these vernal shades, a thing of beauty and an abiding joy. But, least of all, no doubt, did you imagine that the high honor would be yours to bestow upon the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Pioneer Association this everlasting deed to God’s sacred acre on which shall rest forever the historic Salt Cairn of the Lewis and Clark regime of the Century gone, a silent witness of the primitive struggles that gave Old Oregon to these United States when the whole of Oregon was young. That you may live to realize the fullest desire of your patriotic heart in the very near future, when through the affirmative votes of liberty-loving men the last vestige of “taxation without representation” shall be lifted from the shoulders of women of whom Sacajawea was an original type, is the earnest prayer of every patriotic Pioneer. NOTES (1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Oregon Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.). Curiously, Scott states that the Oregon Historical Society acquired the site in 1901 (History of the Oregon Country 1: 152 [n. 2]). He was a son of Rev. Elkanah Walker and Mary A. Richardson Walker. Transactions of the Thirty-Seventh 290-91. Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15). Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879): magazine editor; born Newport, New Hampshire; teacher, c. 1806-13; married attorney David Hale, 1813; five children; widowed in 1822, compelled by circumstances to open millinery and turned seriously to writing verse and fiction; became editor, Rev. John Lauris Blake’s Ladies’ Magazine, 1828, and moved to Boston; accepted most prevailing beliefs about “woman’s sphere,” but championed greater educational opportunities such as the female seminary movement and state normal schools for women; became editor, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1837, when Godey bought Ladies’ Magazine, combining it with his Lady’s Book, and moved to Philadelphia, where she continued to warn against militant woman’s rights ideas such as equality with men and suffrage, and tended to avoid controversial topics altogether; gradually came to accept some careers outside the home, including charity, missionary work, and medicine; supported property rights for married women; built Godey’s circulation to a record-breaking 150,000 by 1860; wrote “Mary had a little lamb” and other poems; her agitation responsible for Lincoln’s proclamation of a national Thanksgiving Day, October, 1864; fifty or so books attributed to her; announced retirement in December, 1877, issue, at age 90; died following April (Boyer, “Hale”; Mott 1: 583-84). Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pensylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis & Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215). Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146). William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55). A reference to the statue of Sacagawea unveiled at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905. Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright (1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.).
PORTLAND CHARTER COMMISSION – January 26, 1909
The progressive currents making headway across the United States in the early years of the twentieth century influenced Oregon as well.1 In August, 1908, during Democrat-cum-populist Harry Lane’s2 second term as Mayor of Portland, a Charter Commission began to consider alternative forms of municipal government such as the recently-devised “Des Moines Plan” of government by nonpartisan, […]
The progressive currents making headway across the United States in the early years of the twentieth century influenced Oregon as well.1 In August, 1908, during Democrat-cum-populist Harry Lane’s<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_2_106" id="identifier_2_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1855-1917): Portland’s first populist mayor, who clashed repeatedly with corrupt authorities; born Corvallis; graduated with medical degree from Willamette University, 1876; appointed superintendent, state hospital for insane, 1887; mayor, 1905-09; U.S. Senate, 1913 until death, where worked particularly in child labor, pure food, and Indian affairs; final Senate vote was against resolution committing U.S. to entry in World War I; grandson of Gen. Joseph Lane, first territorial governor; Democrat (Corning 142; “Biography: Lane, Harry,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.).">2 second term as Mayor of Portland, a Charter Commission began to consider alternative forms of municipal government such as the recently-devised “Des Moines Plan” of government by nonpartisan, elected commissioners. For months the Commission was the epicenter of fierce political wrangling.<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_3_106" id="identifier_3_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The full story cannot be told here. Suffice it to note that the Commission’s chair, Republican Henry E. McGinn, was an old political rival of Lane’s (defeating Lane in a state senate race in 1901) and that, in April, 1909, the City Council was presented with two competing new charters. The commission form of government finally replaced the old councilmanic ward system in 1912, Lane’s last year as mayor (Dodds 173).">3 Midway through the Commission’s deliberations, soon after launching the statewide campaign for suffrage for tax-paying women, and just days after progressives managed to revoke the city’s street paving monopoly, Scott Duniway appeared before the Commission to urge that it include an analogous municipal suffrage provision for tax-paying women in the new city charter. Abigail had no patience for the anti-suffrage view of “True Womanhood,” in which women required “protection” from the hostile forces of the world outside the home; in her view, such “theories” were grossly unrealistic. Here, for example, she notes the increasing numbers of working women, argues that women in fact are better businesspeople than men, and then appeals to the principle of justice, i.e., that taxation without representation is tyranny. (She also argues that municipal suffrage would not violate the state constitution.) The strategy of limiting equal suffrage to tax-paying women was designed, in part, to reinvigorate this principle’s rhetorical appeal. But a half-measure suggests a half-hearted principle and, in a context of populist foment, must have seemed particularly “old guard.” This may have been exactly the wrong moment to play it safe. Also noteworthy is a tension in Scott Duniway’s attitude toward her audience. At the outset she seeks to reassure her audience of a spirit of “amity and friendship.” Nonetheless much of the remainder pointedly chides the “average man” generally and the men of the commission in particular, so much so that one wonders, when she exempts “present company” from her needling, how sincerely this is meant. In a nutshell, this captures a recurrent problematic feature of Scott Duniway’s rhetoric: the effort to praise men and appeal to their sense of chivalry, from a sharp-witted woman with a finely-honed sense of sarcasm. Abigail struggled throughout her public life to strike the peace between these conciliatory and antagonistic tendencies, which helps account for the widely divergent reactions she provoked in allies and enemies alike. A (corrupt?) manuscript of this speech appears in Scrapbook #2 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Her comments (at least substantial excerpts) also were reprinted by an unidentified newspaper, a clipping of which can be found in Scrapbook #1.<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_4_106" id="identifier_4_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Oregonian, Oregon Daily Journal, and Portland Evening Telegram all reported on January 27 that Scott Duniway had addressed the commission, the first describing it as “one of her forceful talks” and the last an “able address.” However, none published the text. Another copy of this clipping is located in “Biography – Abigail Scott Duniway,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.">4 In broad outline, and sometimes in stylistic detail, the two are parallel, establishing without a doubt that they represent different versions of the same speech. Yet, they also differ dramatically. Scott Duniway’s habit of extemporaneous delivery rather than slavish adherence to prepared remarks is well-established; here, the newspaper report repeatedly amplifies upon the manuscript and probably more faithfully conveys the entirety of Abigail’s actual speech.<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_5_106" id="identifier_5_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="There is one important exception: The manuscript also appeals for support of the 1910 statewide referendum, but the newspaper report does not. Perhaps Scott Duniway spontaneously omitted this portion of her planned talk; perhaps the report, even if comparatively more faithful, still is incomplete.">5 Further evidence that the manuscript was less a polished script than a set of “talking points,” which she often embellished or departed from, is that two pages merely rework two others.<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_6_106" id="identifier_6_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The manuscript is consecutively paginated one through nine, but there are two sixes and two (actually three–see below) eights; each pair comprises two versions of the same material. Discontinuities at the page breaks (noted herein by ellipses) often signal missing pages in a manuscript. However, given her extempore habits, this pagination could signal that the manuscript is complete as a set of notes, achieved by discarding draft pages; as “talking points,” the discontinuities between pages would have been unimportant and the paired pages would represent choices that she would wait until the moment to make. Scott Duniway’s struggle to navigate antagonistic versus conciliatory attitudes is palpable in three versions of comments directed to Judge McGinn near speech’s end: Some of the bite of the first manuscript version is moderated in the alternate manuscript version, and the “embarrassment” that McGinn’s statements are said to cause him in both versions is transformed into a “credit to your manhood” in the newspaper account!">6 Mr. Chairman and Members of the Charter Commission, Gentlemen, and (incidentally) Ladies: In grateful acknowledgment of the courtesy extended to me tonight on behalf of the many present and prospective wage-earning, tax-paying women of Portland, whom I have the honor to represent, I wish, first of all, to impress you with the fact that we come before you in the spirit of amity and friendship. We all like men better than we like women. I, myself, had spent nearly a quarter of a century in mothering men before the public heard from me at all; and, although, since that work was accomplished, I have been the recipient of fame and honors far above my early anticipations, there is no other part of my strenuous life upon which I look backward with the extreme satisfaction that crowns the memory of the busy years when “With little children clinging to my gown,” I was one of the myriads of humble mothers who “Trod the old kitchen floor.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_7_106" id="identifier_7_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Apparently loosely borrowed from a poem published, alternately, as “Old Kitchen Reveries” (Good Housekeeping 24 Dec. 1887; author “unidentified”) or Memories of the Old Kitchen” (Manford’s New Monthly Magazine Oct. 1888; by Mrs. S. P. Snow).">7 But the world of working women has changed its front. The manufactures which formerly occupied women within the home, have been transferred from the home to the store, the office, the lodging house, the hotel and the factory. And women, whose physical necessities are equal to men’s and their moral obligations to others often far greater, have been compelled in many, if not the majority of cases, to follow the work that has been taken away from the home to the business they are compelled to pursue in order to have any home at all to keep. I admit and admire the power of men. I admire their theories about “clinging vines” to which they delight to compare women, and “sturdy oaks” to which they love to compare themselves. If these theories were facts, with only an occasional exception, there would never have been a “woman movement” on the face of the earth, for there would never have been any cause for it. But the average man, (this Honorable Body, the Charter Commission and its aiders and abettors of course excepted) is not a successful business man. Look at the lodging houses, boarding houses, apartment houses, little hotels–all kept by women. Follow the crowds of women clerks, stenographers, day-laborers, sewing machine operators, laundry women and house cleaners, none of whom are supported and protected by husbands and fathers, not to mention teachers, doctors and professional women of all sorts and grades, whose livelihood depends upon their own efforts, and I am sure you will agree with me that, (present company excepted) the list of women who are not “supported” within the home is much larger than that of the sheltered, favored few whose husbands and fathers have endowed them with a livelihood they have not earned by labor of their own hands or brain. I am not coming to you tonight with a request for anything new or tentative. But I do ask, in all seriousness, that you embody, in the charter you are taking so much pains to prepare, an article granting municipal suffrage to the tax-paying women citizens of Portland who are as deeply interested as yourselves in the governing provisions of this rapidly growing metropolis, whose expenses they must help to pay. I know that lawyers–especially those educated in the archaic law schools of Eastern Universities, will oppose us with the cry of “unconstitutional.” Mr Chairman<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_8_106" id="identifier_8_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Henry E. McGinn (1859-1923): son of Irish Catholic baker; born Portland; studied law, University of Oregon; admitted to bar, 1879; elected prosecuting attorney for Fourth District, 1880, serving 2 terms; elected state senate, 1892; appointed Circuit Judge, Fourth District, 1895; elected to state senate, 1901, defeating Harry Lane; married Louise Summers, 1909; elected state circuit court judge, 1911, serving six years and refusing second term; Republican; close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Harvey Scott; refused national office because didn’t want to leave Oregon (Lockley 2: 810-14; Republican League Register 243; Scrapbook #261: 104, OR Hist. Soc.) Many eulogies and stories are preserved in Scrapbook #261: 104-08, OR Hist. Soc. Evidently, McGinn was fond of drink and impatient with precedent and technicality on the bench; see clippings in Scrapbook #272: 76-82, especially the scathing “The Truth About McGinn” by one Elmer L. Amidon, who calls him a drunk, a womanizer, and unpatriotic, lumping him together with Emma Goldman, I.W.W.’ers, and Bolshevism (76-79). But he was a good friend of the Duniway family. On what would have been Abigail’s eighty-first birthday (she had died eleven days before), McGinn wrote to Wilkie Duniway, recalling those days in 1871 when the Duniways had come to Portland, and extolling his mother’s “great life,” “noble work,” and “splendid example” (Morning Oregonian 25 Oct. 1915).">8: In the masterly argument on this very question which I heard you make at the Forum last Sunday evening, you said, and your speech was applauded to the echo, that nothing was more unjust or ridiculous than attempts to . . . created by them for their safety and happiness; that, whenever any government becomes subversive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. The tax-paying, wage-earning, home-making mothers of Portland have not commissioned me to ask you to alter or abolish the government we are compelled to pay taxes to maintain. But we do ask you to so extend its provisions by a clause in your proposed Charter that every woman, within the confines of this great and growing metropolis may have a voice in the distribution of her taxes. Women insist that they are not asking you for any new or untried experiment. I have here a summary of precedents to<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_9_106" id="identifier_9_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The second, apparently unchosen, version of page six reads instead: “created by them for their safety and happiness. That whenever any government becomes subversive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government that shall be conducive to their safety and happiness. I am not here, gentlemen to ask you to alter or abolish the government, but to so extend its provisions that it shall conform to the present conditions of women in this wage-earning, property-holding, tax-paying municipality. Every member of this Commission knows, in his heart of hearts, that our demand is reasonable and just.”">9 . . . to which I respectfully call your attention. Passing over tax-paying school suffrage, which has been granted to women in a majority of the States in the Union without a change in their respective Constitutions, of which Oregon is a noted example, and omitting mention of the many governments of the Old World where municipal suffrage prevails, please note that this form of suffrage is now enjoyed by the women of Kansas and Louisiana without a change in their State Constitutions. I have myself voted, in company of many other tax-paying women upon bonds for bridge building, and you all know the Constitutionality of that vote has never been questioned. Your Honor informed us the other night at the Forum, that everybody was to be allowed to vote for or against the new Charter, not in sections, but as a whole. Duty to my constituents compelled me to ask if everybody included women. But, when I asked if women were not people what are we, I confess that I sympathized with your evident embarrassment when you dodged the question, for I knew a man so noted as yourself for chivalry and justice would have been glad to acknowledge the existence of the mothers of men as a component part of “everybody” if we had been voters already. We ask you to relieve yourselves of this embarrassment by throwing for us a<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_10_106" id="identifier_10_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The second version of page eight renders this paragraph as: “Mr. Chairman, when you informed us the other night at the Forum that the ‘everybody’ you were telling us would have a chance to vote yes or no on the proposed Charter didn’t include tax paying women, I confess I felt a motherly sympathy for your evident embarrassment. That it is in the power of this commission to give tax-paying women a referendum vote on a separate clause in its many articles respecting their own right to the equal protection of the laws they help to maintain by an enforced levy for which they are now denied representation”. The relevance of a third page eight, which simply lists “Wyoming, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,” is highly uncertain; it might have been related to the earlier discussion of “precedents.”">10 . . . a municipal plank and extending to our freed hands the power to seize it. You know you can do it if you will; you know you ought to do it if you don’t. But, whether you extend this plank to us for use in the city government at this time or not, there is one thing you can do for the faithful women wives and mothers of the men of Oregon at the next State election. As you know, we have a tax-paying citizens Constitutional Amendment pending for the election of 1910. This election is placed beyond the power of the present Legislative Assembly to prevent, it having been accepted and filed by our Secretary of State under the laws of 1907-8. You can, gentlemen, and we sincerely The newspaper reports: In grateful acknowledgement of the courtesy you have extended to me tonight, and on behalf of the many present, prospective business and tax-paying and home-building women of our rapidly growing metropolis, I wish, first of all, to impress you with the fact that we come before you in the spirit of fair dealing, amity and friendly association. I myself had spent the greater part of a quarter century in mothering men before the public had heard from me at all. And, although, since my children have long been useful and honored citizens of the Union, residing in homes of their own, I have become the recipient of fame and honor far beyond my early anticipations, I am proud to tell you that there is no other part of my long and strenuous life upon which I look backward with the extreme satisfaction that crowns the memory of those busy years when, “With little children clinging to my gown,” I was one of the faithful, old-fashioned mothers who “Trod the kitchen floor.” But the world for working women has changed front since then. The manufacture of food and clothing, which formerly occupied the time of working women within the home, has been transferred to the restaurant, the store, the hotel, the office, the lodging-house, the creamery, the laundry and the factory. Women who are so situated that they must work or starve, whose financial and physical necessities are equal to men’s, and their moral obligations to others dependent upon them often greater, have been compelled to follow the work that modern enterprise has taken away from the home, in quest of the gainful occupations they are compelled to pursue if they are to have any homes at all to keep. I admire the power and enterprise of men. I admire their pretty theories about women, whom they call “clinging vines”; and their own assumption that they are “sturdy oaks” makes pretty reading and lacks only the application of truth to make them universally irresistible. We all know that the average man (present company of course excepted) is not a “sturdy oak,” nor is the average woman a “clinging vine.” If this honorable body really believes that women, as a class, are “supported” by men, let them consider the numerous rooming-houses, boarding-houses, apartment-houses and little hotels, kept by women, whose husbands stand at the receipts of customs; or, if the wife demands her right to take over that part of the business herself (as these unreasonable creatures called women sometimes do), look at the divorce docket and study, as I have so often been compelled to do when, in their helplessness, deserted women have appealed to me for advice and assistance. Then, let them follow the crowds of women on almost any week-day morning going to their work. Note the clerks, stenographers, day laborers, sewing-machine operators, typewriters, laundresses, house cleaners, none of whom are adequately supported within the home, not to mention the professional women, such as teachers, doctors, etcetera, whose livelihood depends upon their own efforts, and you cannot help but see that the list of women who contribute to the support of the home on the outside is much larger than the sheltered classes, including the few whose husbands or themselves have inherited fortunes, manipulated franchises, wrecked banks, conducted speculations successfully, or maneuvered skillfully to outwit the law. If I do not appeal for the few women who pay taxes upon inherited property to any considerable amount, it is because they are able to speak for themselves; and when the shoe of the law pinches them, they will, like Mrs. Russell Sage<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_11_106" id="identifier_11_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (1828-1918): philanthropist; born Syracuse, New York; graduated Troy Female Seminary, 1847; taught at Chestnut Street Seminary, Philadelphia, where ill health forced her to resign after two years; married Russell B. Sage, former Congressman, 1869; Presbyterian; interested in home and foreign missions, W.C.T.U., elimination of prostitution, tobacco, and vice, pure food (especially milk inspection), humane treatment of animals, woman suffrage, and education; when Sage died in 1906, leaving estate in excess of $63 million, she became America’s foremost woman philanthropist, with total gifts $75-$80 million, comparable to Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan; founded Russell Sage Foundation and Russell Sage College; other major gifts benefited U.S. Military Academy, Harvard, Yale, Emma Willard School (formerly Troy Seminary), Syracuse, Tuskegee, Hampton, New York Public Library, Children’s Aid Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, New York Botanical Gardens, New York Zoological Society (Wyllie).">11, Mrs. Clarence McKay<a href="https://asduniway.org/portland-charter-commission-january-26-1909/#footnote_12_106" id="identifier_12_106" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Katherine Alexander Duer Mackay Blake (1879-1930): Gilded Age socialite, author; born New York City; descendent of Catherine Alexander (“Lady Kitty”) and Col. William Alexander Duer, member of Continental Congress and Treasury official (appointed by Alexander Hamilton) whose insider speculation in bank stocks triggered crash of 1792; daughter of William Alexander Duer, lawyer, and Ellin Travers Duer; educated at home; married Clarence Hungerford Mackay, 1898, heir to John William Mackay’s silver fortune (co-discovered Bonanza mines, founded Bank of Nevada), and capitalist who developed cable and telegraph interests, eventually director, International Telephone and Telegraph; resided “Harbor Hill” (stone French chateau designed by Stanford White) on six hundred acres, Roslyn, Long Island; daughter Ellin was second wife of composer Irving Berlin; “beautiful, vivacious, determined and opinionated”; Roslyn Public School Board, 1905-10; founded Equal Franchise Society, 1909, contributed large sums, recruited many of New York’s most influential women; refused to let Society march in Fifth Ave. suffrage parades, 1910-11, favoring less combative theatrical pageants; reports circulated that Mrs. Joseph Augustus Blake, M.D., would file for divorce and sue her for damages, September, 1913; divorced Mackay, May, 1914; married Blake, November, 1914, one day after his divorce was final; lived in Paris during war, where he was chief American surgeon; divorced Blake, 1929 (he remarried–for third time–almost immediately); authored “Stone of Destiny,” 1903, “Some Letters,” 1917-18; contributed to North American Review, Harper’s, others; Episcopalian; member, Colony Club; died of pneumonia (New York Times 20 Apr. 1930; Who was Who 104, 763; Graham 39; Lumsden 99, 107; Rhoda Amon, “The Architect of Desire”; “Trinity Church History“; Kathy Larkin and Joyce Gabriel, “LI’s Rebels With a Cause”; “The New Netherlands Ancestors of Catherine Alexander Duer, the Wife of Clarence Hungerford Mackay”; “John William Mackay”; Brian Trumbone, “William Duer and the Crash of 1792”).">12 and other millionaire legatees of New York, begin to make protests on their own account. I am not coming before you with any tentative proposition. But I do ask, in all seriousness, that you do not barter away the women’s franchise as men bartered away other franchises against which they now struggle in vain. All we ask is that you incorporate in the new charter a provision extending the privileges of the elective franchise to taxpaying women. You need not be afraid of us. We will do you good, and not evil. See what we are doing, or trying to do through the Women’s Clubs, all along the line. Most women are, as yet, too timid to make protest before you on their own account. But they are alive to the situations, as you will discover when you invite them into their rightful heritage, for which they expectantly wait. I know that lawyers, especially those educated in archaic universities, such as abound in archaic states, will say our demand for municipal enfranchisement for taxpaying women by charter is “unconstitutional.” But I have often noticed that lawyers and judges can find ways to stretch the constitution, throw planks across it or tunnel through it, if they or their clients so desire. I might cite many decisions of the courts to illustrate this point if I had the time. In the masterly argument made at the People’s Forum recently, your honor said (alluding to Judge McGinn), and the speech was applauded to the echo, that “nothing was more ridiculous than attempts to compel the people of today to live under the rigid restrictions imposed upon them by men long since dead, who, by the very nature of our changed conditions, could not have foreseen our Twentieth Century necessities.” And this frank admission of facts, as applied to men, is doubly true of women who are denied to this day all the rights as to citizenship which dead men bestowed upon you before you were born. The tax-paying, business-managing home-making women of industrial Portland are not asking you to insert a patch in your constitution. All we ask is that you open the way for women to go around it, or as you do when you so desire, to bridge, or tunnel through it. In so doing you will deal by women exactly as you know we should do by our husbands, fathers or sons under like conditions. I have here a summary of precedents to which I wish to call your attention. Passing over school suffrage, which men have accorded women in the majority of the States of the Union without the formality of a constitutional amendment–states in which Oregon is a notable example–and omitting mention of the many governments of the Old World where municipal suffrage prevails, please note that this form of suffrage is now enjoyed by the women of Kansas, Louisiana and many towns and cities of New York and was granted to them without any change in their state constitutions. That the women of the four states directly to the east of us are enjoying full suffrage is another story, not germane to this contention. I have, myself, voted, in company with other tax-paying women of Portland, upon bonds for bridge building, and you all know that the constitutionality of that vote has never been called in question. Yet it is exactly in line with municipal suffrage for which we ask a place in the new charter. Your honor (addressing the chair), informs us at the Forum that “everybody” might have a vote for or against the new charter. But when you were asked if “everybody” included women, the blush that overspread your features did credit to your manhood when you shook your head and answered “No.” We are [imploring]13 you, men and brethren, to insert for taxpaying women a municipal suffrage plank in the new charter, to maintain which the tax gatherer will never miss us. We know you can do it if you will, and you know you ought to do it if you don’t. NOTES Generally, see Dodds 152-84; Schwantes 345-62. (1855-1917): Portland’s first populist mayor, who clashed repeatedly with corrupt authorities; born Corvallis; graduated with medical degree from Willamette University, 1876; appointed superintendent, state hospital for insane, 1887; mayor, 1905-09; U.S. Senate, 1913 until death, where worked particularly in child labor, pure food, and Indian affairs; final Senate vote was against resolution committing U.S. to entry in World War I; grandson of Gen. Joseph Lane, first territorial governor; Democrat (Corning 142; “Biography: Lane, Harry,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.). The full story cannot be told here. Suffice it to note that the Commission’s chair, Republican Henry E. McGinn, was an old political rival of Lane’s (defeating Lane in a state senate race in 1901) and that, in April, 1909, the City Council was presented with two competing new charters. The commission form of government finally replaced the old councilmanic ward system in 1912, Lane’s last year as mayor (Dodds 173). The Oregonian, Oregon Daily Journal, and Portland Evening Telegram all reported on January 27 that Scott Duniway had addressed the commission, the first describing it as “one of her forceful talks” and the last an “able address.” However, none published the text. Another copy of this clipping is located in “Biography – Abigail Scott Duniway,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc. There is one important exception: The manuscript also appeals for support of the 1910 statewide referendum, but the newspaper report does not. Perhaps Scott Duniway spontaneously omitted this portion of her planned talk; perhaps the report, even if comparatively more faithful, still is incomplete. The manuscript is consecutively paginated one through nine, but there are two sixes and two (actually three–see below) eights; each pair comprises two versions of the same material. Discontinuities at the page breaks (noted herein by ellipses) often signal missing pages in a manuscript. However, given her extempore habits, this pagination could signal that the manuscript is complete as a set of notes, achieved by discarding draft pages; as “talking points,” the discontinuities between pages would have been unimportant and the paired pages would represent choices that she would wait until the moment to make. Scott Duniway’s struggle to navigate antagonistic versus conciliatory attitudes is palpable in three versions of comments directed to Judge McGinn near speech’s end: Some of the bite of the first manuscript version is moderated in the alternate manuscript version, and the “embarrassment” that McGinn’s statements are said to cause him in both versions is transformed into a “credit to your manhood” in the newspaper account! Apparently loosely borrowed from a poem published, alternately, as “Old Kitchen Reveries” (Good Housekeeping 24 Dec. 1887; author “unidentified”) or Memories of the Old Kitchen” (Manford’s New Monthly Magazine Oct. 1888; by Mrs. S. P. Snow). Henry E. McGinn (1859-1923): son of Irish Catholic baker; born Portland; studied law, University of Oregon; admitted to bar, 1879; elected prosecuting attorney for Fourth District, 1880, serving 2 terms; elected state senate, 1892; appointed Circuit Judge, Fourth District, 1895; elected to state senate, 1901, defeating Harry Lane; married Louise Summers, 1909; elected state circuit court judge, 1911, serving six years and refusing second term; Republican; close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Harvey Scott; refused national office because didn’t want to leave Oregon (Lockley 2: 810-14; Republican League Register 243; Scrapbook #261: 104, OR Hist. Soc.) Many eulogies and stories are preserved in Scrapbook #261: 104-08, OR Hist. Soc. Evidently, McGinn was fond of drink and impatient with precedent and technicality on the bench; see clippings in Scrapbook #272: 76-82, especially the scathing “The Truth About McGinn” by one Elmer L. Amidon, who calls him a drunk, a womanizer, and unpatriotic, lumping him together with Emma Goldman, I.W.W.’ers, and Bolshevism (76-79). But he was a good friend of the Duniway family. On what would have been Abigail’s eighty-first birthday (she had died eleven days before), McGinn wrote to Wilkie Duniway, recalling those days in 1871 when the Duniways had come to Portland, and extolling his mother’s “great life,” “noble work,” and “splendid example” (Morning Oregonian 25 Oct. 1915). The second, apparently unchosen, version of page six reads instead: “created by them for their safety and happiness. That whenever any government becomes subversive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government that shall be conducive to their safety and happiness. I am not here, gentlemen to ask you to alter or abolish the government, but to so extend its provisions that it shall conform to the present conditions of women in this wage-earning, property-holding, tax-paying municipality. Every member of this Commission knows, in his heart of hearts, that our demand is reasonable and just.” The second version of page eight renders this paragraph as: “Mr. Chairman, when you informed us the other night at the Forum that the ‘everybody’ you were telling us would have a chance to vote yes or no on the proposed Charter didn’t include tax paying women, I confess I felt a motherly sympathy for your evident embarrassment. That it is in the power of this commission to give tax-paying women a referendum vote on a separate clause in its many articles respecting their own right to the equal protection of the laws they help to maintain by an enforced levy for which they are now denied representation”. The relevance of a third page eight, which simply lists “Wyoming, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,” is highly uncertain; it might have been related to the earlier discussion of “precedents.” Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage (1828-1918): philanthropist; born Syracuse, New York; graduated Troy Female Seminary, 1847; taught at Chestnut Street Seminary, Philadelphia, where ill health forced her to resign after two years; married Russell B. Sage, former Congressman, 1869; Presbyterian; interested in home and foreign missions, W.C.T.U., elimination of prostitution, tobacco, and vice, pure food (especially milk inspection), humane treatment of animals, woman suffrage, and education; when Sage died in 1906, leaving estate in excess of $63 million, she became America’s foremost woman philanthropist, with total gifts $75-$80 million, comparable to Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan; founded Russell Sage Foundation and Russell Sage College; other major gifts benefited U.S. Military Academy, Harvard, Yale, Emma Willard School (formerly Troy Seminary), Syracuse, Tuskegee, Hampton, New York Public Library, Children’s Aid Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, New York Botanical Gardens, New York Zoological Society (Wyllie). Katherine Alexander Duer Mackay Blake (1879-1930): Gilded Age socialite, author; born New York City; descendent of Catherine Alexander (“Lady Kitty”) and Col. William Alexander Duer, member of Continental Congress and Treasury official (appointed by Alexander Hamilton) whose insider speculation in bank stocks triggered crash of 1792; daughter of William Alexander Duer, lawyer, and Ellin Travers Duer; educated at home; married Clarence Hungerford Mackay, 1898, heir to John William Mackay’s silver fortune (co-discovered Bonanza mines, founded Bank of Nevada), and capitalist who developed cable and telegraph interests, eventually director, International Telephone and Telegraph; resided “Harbor Hill” (stone French chateau designed by Stanford White) on six hundred acres, Roslyn, Long Island; daughter Ellin was second wife of composer Irving Berlin; “beautiful, vivacious, determined and opinionated”; Roslyn Public School Board, 1905-10; founded Equal Franchise Society, 1909, contributed large sums, recruited many of New York’s most influential women; refused to let Society march in Fifth Ave. suffrage parades, 1910-11, favoring less combative theatrical pageants; reports circulated that Mrs. Joseph Augustus Blake, M.D., would file for divorce and sue her for damages, September, 1913; divorced Mackay, May, 1914; married Blake, November, 1914, one day after his divorce was final; lived in Paris during war, where he was chief American surgeon; divorced Blake, 1929 (he remarried–for third time–almost immediately); authored “Stone of Destiny,” 1903, “Some Letters,” 1917-18; contributed to North American Review, Harper’s, others; Episcopalian; member, Colony Club; died of pneumonia (New York Times 20 Apr. 1930; Who was Who 104, 763; Graham 39; Lumsden 99, 107; Rhoda Amon, “The Architect of Desire”; “Trinity Church History“; Kathy Larkin and Joyce Gabriel, “LI’s Rebels With a Cause”; “The New Netherlands Ancestors of Catherine Alexander Duer, the Wife of Clarence Hungerford Mackay”; “John William Mackay”; Brian Trumbone, “William Duer and the Crash of 1792”). The newspaper mistakenly reads “employing”
OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 27, 1908
Five months after “another dismal defeat” at the polls, the thirty-eighth annual convention of O.S.E.S.A. met at the Portland Commercial Club. Among others, Clara Bewick Colby1 spoke about the suffrage efforts of London women, Myrtle E. Pease2 reported on her efforts as the association’s organizer, and Sarah A. Evans3 described the national convention of Federated […]
Five months after “another dismal defeat” at the polls, the thirty-eighth annual convention of O.S.E.S.A. met at the Portland Commercial Club. Among others, Clara Bewick Colby<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_1_104" id="identifier_1_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”).">1 spoke about the suffrage efforts of London women, Myrtle E. Pease<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_2_104" id="identifier_2_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Myrtle Evalyne Pease Hatfield (1873-1913): born Newton, Iowa; daughter of Clinton W. (1839-1913) and Margaret A. Pease; came to Oregon with parents, 1899; taught school in Albany for five years, c. 1904, then two years in rural sections, then three years in Mt. Tabor; resigned to take position with Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society, traveling throughout state “looking after neglected children, often undergoing great hardship and privation”; corresponding secretary, O.S.E.S.A., 1906-11; married Charles Hatfield, retired Forest Grove merchant, Oct. 4, 1911; died suddenly in Forest Grove, March 14; coroner’s inquest; cause of death unknown (Forest Grove Press 20 Mar. 1913; Washington County News-Times 20 Mar. 1913; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 215; cf. Springsteen, who says she was born in Nebraska in 1874).">2 reported on her efforts as the association’s organizer, and Sarah A. Evans<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_3_104" id="identifier_3_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own, 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215).">3 described the national convention of Federated Women’s Clubs, held the previous summer in Boston. However, the opening address on this Friday evening belonged to the president, who gave a historical account of the international woman suffrage movement over the preceding seventy-five years. This history, informative in its own right4, harmonizes well with Scott Duniway’s common themes (here more implicit than explicit) of evolutionary progress and inevitable success, particularly when she turns, near the end, to the forthcoming 1910 campaign in Oregon. Of particular interest is the fact that the 1910 campaign that Scott Duniway presages here–-her fifth–-was for a constitutional amendment conferring, not universal suffrage, but suffrage for tax-paying women only. The idea for this half-way measure had come from several editors, as well as Governor George E. Chamberlain. Apparently it was intended to break the doldrums of four consecutive losing campaigns by trying something new, to reinvigorate the slogan that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” and to reassure business interests who were wary of “freak” measures concocted by “irresponsible and nomadic” citizens via initiative and referendum.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_5_104" id="identifier_5_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A. Duniway, Path Breaking 181-82; “A Pioneer Incident” n. 2. McKern notes that, despite its restrictive title, the text of the amendment was more expansive and would have granted all women the vote; moreover, the restriction would have been more apparent than real because even paying a small tax on an article of clothing would qualify. This discrepancy generated much confusion and opposition from socialists, non-tax-paying men who feared that they would be disenfranchised, and the W.C.T.U., which thought the measure was sure to be ruled unconstitutional (135-36). Although the discrepancy might have been a printing error, Abigail suspected deliberate sabotage in the state printer’s office while son Willis, the state printer, was absent, recuperating from a heart attack. In any event, the cause was lost; the amendment would be defeated by 22,600 votes, producing “general satisfaction” in many quarters, including among those who delighted in Abigail’s failures (Moynihan, Rebel 214; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 544).">5 Even so, this compromise in the interest of political expediency must have been hard to swallow; ultimately, Abigail’s principles could not be satisfied with “half-steps.” The text is taken from the Oregonian of November 29, 1908. A slightly condensed version of the speech was adapted as an Open Letter, mailed to all the leading men of the state during the subsequent campaign.6 Alice Stone Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_7_104" id="identifier_7_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for thirty-five years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost twenty years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim).">7, the gifted daughter of Lucy Stone<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_8_104" id="identifier_8_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim).">8 and Henry B. Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_9_104" id="identifier_9_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909): born Bristol, England; Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist; one of earliest advocates of woman suffrage in America, making first speech in its favor in Cleveland, 1853; married Lucy Stone, 1855; co-edited Woman’s Journal.">9, recording secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and one of the most thoroughgoing chronologists of modern times, says: “It is sometimes said that while the movement for women’s education and property rights has advanced rapidly, the movement for suffrage has made little or no progress. On this point let the ‘hard facts’ speak for themselves.” Seventy years ago women could not vote anywhere, except to a very limited extent in Sweden, and a few other places in the Old World. In 1838, Kentucky gave school suffrage to widows with children of school age. In 1850, Ontario gave it to women, both married and single. In 1861, Kansas gave it to all women. In 1867, New South Wales gave women municipal suffrage. In 1869, England gave municipal suffrage to single women and widows. In that year, Victoria10 gave it to women, both married and single, and Wyoming gave full suffrage to all women. In 1871, West Australia gave municipal suffrage to women. School suffrage was granted in 1875 by Michigan and Minnesota; in 1873, by Colorado; in 1877 by New Zealand; in 1878, by New Hampshire and Oregon; in 1879, by Massachusetts; in 1880, by New York and Vermont. In 1880, South Australia gave municipal suffrage to women. In 1881, municipal suffrage was extended to single women and widows of Scotland. Nebraska gave women school suffrage in 1883. Municipal suffrage was given by Ontario and Tasmania in 1884, and by New Zealand and New Brunswick in 1886. In 1887, municipal suffrage was granted in Kansas, Nova Scotia and Manitoba, and school suffrage in North and South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey. In the same year Montana gave tax-paying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to tax-paying citizens. In 1888, England gave women county suffrage, and British Columbia and the Northwest Territory gave them municipal suffrage. In 1889, county suffrage was given to the women of Scotland, and municipal suffrage to single women and widows in the Province of Quebec. In 1891, school suffrage was granted in Illinois. In 1893, school suffrage was granted in Connecticut and full suffrage in Colorado and New Zealand. In 1894, school suffrage was granted in Ohio, bond suffrage in Iowa and parish and district suffrage in England, to women, both married and single. In 1885, full suffrage was granted in South Australia to women, both married and single. In 1896, full suffrage was granted to Utah and Idaho. In 1898, the women of Ireland were given the right to vote for all offices except members of Parliament; Minnesota gave women the right to vote for library trustees; Delaware gave school suffrage to tax-paying women; France gave women engaged in commerce the right to vote for Judges of the Tribunal of Commerce, and Louisiana gave tax-paying women the right to vote upon all questions submitted to tax-payers. In 1900, Wisconsin gave women school suffrage, and West Australia granted full suffrage to women, both married and single. In 1901, New York gave tax-paying women, in all towns and villages of the state, the right to vote on questions of local taxation. Norway gave them municipal suffrage, and the Kansas Legislature voted down, almost unanimously, “amid a ripple of amusement,” a proposal to repeal municipal suffrage. In 1902, full National suffrage was granted to all women of federated Australia, and state suffrage to the women of New South Wales. In 1903, bond suffrage was granted to the women of Kansas, and Tasmania gave women full suffrage. In 1905, Queensland gave women full suffrage. In 1906, Finland gave full suffrage to women, and made them eligible to all offices, from members of Parliament down. In 1907 Norway gave full Parliamentary suffrage to the 300,000 women who already had municipal suffrage. Sweden made women eligible to [hold] municipal office, Denmark gave women the right to vote for members of boards of public charities, and to serve on such boards, and England, with only 15 dissenting votes out of the 676 members of the House of Commons, made women eligible as Mayors, Aldermen and County and Town Councillors. In 1908 Denmark gave women the right to vote for all officers except Members of Parliament, and Michigan has just adopted a new constitution containing a clause granting suffrage to taxpaying women. Years ago, when equal suffrage was much more unpopular than it is now, somebody asked Bishop Gilbert Haven<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-27-1908/#footnote_11_104" id="identifier_11_104" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1880): abolitionist; bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church; born Malden, Massachusetts; entered ministry in New England Conference, 1851; “advocated civil rights and absolute social equality, even to racial amalgamation”; edited Zion’s Herald, 1867-72, allied with Charles Sumner, the radical Republicans, prohibition, woman suffrage, and lay representation; elected to episcopacy of General Conference, 1872, and settled in Atlanta, where he was ostracized and threatened with violence for practicing what he preached; helped found schools and colleges for freed slaves, and publicized Southern repression in the North, fearlessly denouncing secret organizations that “murdered people for their opinions” (Joy).">11 if it were true that he had been at a suffrage meeting. “Yes,” answered the Bishop, “I don’t want us to fall in at the rear of this reform. I mean to march with the procession. There can be no doubt as to which way the procession is moving.” With these facts before us, added to the recent remarkable progress of the movement in the municipality of Chicago, the adoption of full suffrage in the whole of Federated Australia, and the activity of the leaders of the movement in Washington, California and Oregon, with the enfranchised states of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho laughing in their sleeves at the men of Oregon, whom they accuse of being afraid of the women of their households, and giving that accusation as a reason for men having voted us down last June, we believe the time has come to so far respect the conservatism of the voters of our state as to offer them a compromise. We are, therefore, asking them for a constitutional amendment, providing that no citizen who is a taxpayer shall be denied the elective franchise on account of sex. The initiative petitions leading to this amendment found such ready approval before the voters, after our June defeat, many of whom had before opposed the movement in its entirety, that we were able to gather, through men’s assistance, approximately 10,000 certified signatures inside of six weeks, although it had previously required as many months to obtain as many names for submitting an amendment, asking for full suffrage to the voters at large. Ever since school suffrage was extended to women in 1878, that is, those “who have property in the district on which they or their husbands pay a tax,” there have been leading spirits among us who have been considering the advisability of presenting to the Legislature a bill, having the same provisions as the school suffrage act, but extending the full power of the electorate to taxpaying women of the state at large. But we were never able to agree unanimously upon this point until the late election proved to all of us the overwhelming opposition of the ultra conservative votes and the vote of the ignorant, brutal and criminal classes, who, no matter how widely divergent may be their views, habits and votes on other questions, have always voted together as a unit in opposition to equal rights before the law for the mothers of men. In the hope of allaying the opposition of the former class, but without any expectation of securing the co-operation of the latter combination, we are moving forward expectantly. Our pending constitutional amendment was legally launched on its way to victory on the 16th of September of the current year, and if not made unnecessary by Legislative enactment in 1909, is to be voted upon November 10, 1910. Our platform of principles is absolutely non-partisan. We are not proposing to govern men, nor do we intend to attempt to “drive” them. All we ask is the power to march side by side with our husbands, fathers and brothers and sons, enjoying equally with them the rights and privileges made necessary by the changed conditions of modern times, which have driven so many women out of home into the business and wage-earning world in defense of the homes and property rights which they are paying taxes to maintain. The slogan of our campaign is “No Taxation Without Representation.” The eyes of the enfranchised women of the four states to the east of us, and those of the enfranchised women of the world, are turned with patriotic interest upon Oregon. She alone holds the key to the present situation in the United States of America. It rests with her voters to decide whether she will take the lead in this important progressive movement or leave the honor of victory to Washington, Montana or California, which are now marching in our rear, hoping to overtake and distance us in the race toward liberty, which we believe public-spirited Oregonians will not permit. NOTES Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”). Myrtle Evalyne Pease Hatfield (1873-1913): born Newton, Iowa; daughter of Clinton W. (1839-1913) and Margaret A. Pease; came to Oregon with parents, 1899; taught school in Albany for five years, c. 1904, then two years in rural sections, then three years in Mt. Tabor; resigned to take position with Boy’s and Girl’s Aid Society, traveling throughout state “looking after neglected children, often undergoing great hardship and privation”; corresponding secretary, O.S.E.S.A., 1906-11; married Charles Hatfield, retired Forest Grove merchant, Oct. 4, 1911; died suddenly in Forest Grove, March 14; coroner’s inquest; cause of death unknown (Forest Grove Press 20 Mar. 1913; Washington County News-Times 20 Mar. 1913; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 215; cf. Springsteen, who says she was born in Nebraska in 1874). Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own, 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215). Although I have not attempted to verify each assertion of fact. A. Duniway, Path Breaking 181-82; “A Pioneer Incident” n. 2. McKern notes that, despite its restrictive title, the text of the amendment was more expansive and would have granted all women the vote; moreover, the restriction would have been more apparent than real because even paying a small tax on an article of clothing would qualify. This discrepancy generated much confusion and opposition from socialists, non-tax-paying men who feared that they would be disenfranchised, and the W.C.T.U., which thought the measure was sure to be ruled unconstitutional (135-36). Although the discrepancy might have been a printing error, Abigail suspected deliberate sabotage in the state printer’s office while son Willis, the state printer, was absent, recuperating from a heart attack. In any event, the cause was lost; the amendment would be defeated by 22,600 votes, producing “general satisfaction” in many quarters, including among those who delighted in Abigail’s failures (Moynihan, Rebel 214; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 544). Cf. Path Breaking 182-86, where Scott Duniway states more clearly than does the first paragraph, above, that the historical facts recited here were compiled by Alice Stone Blackwell. (1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for thirty-five years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost twenty years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim). (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909): born Bristol, England; Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist; one of earliest advocates of woman suffrage in America, making first speech in its favor in Cleveland, 1853; married Lucy Stone, 1855; co-edited Woman’s Journal. Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. (1821-1880): abolitionist; bishop, Methodist Episcopal Church; born Malden, Massachusetts; entered ministry in New England Conference, 1851; “advocated civil rights and absolute social equality, even to racial amalgamation”; edited Zion’s Herald, 1867-72, allied with Charles Sumner, the radical Republicans, prohibition, woman suffrage, and lay representation; elected to episcopacy of General Conference, 1872, and settled in Atlanta, where he was ostracized and threatened with violence for practicing what he preached; helped found schools and colleges for freed slaves, and publicized Southern repression in the North, fearlessly denouncing secret organizations that “murdered people for their opinions” (Joy).
WILLAMETTE VALLEY CHAUTAUQUA ASSEMBLY – July 18, 1908
The Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association was incorporated in 1895 “for the general promotion of religious, scientific and educational interests.”1 Each summer, for almost two weeks in July, the association conducted assemblies on the grounds of Gladstone Park in Oregon City. According to its promotional programs, the shaded, seventy-four-acre park with “scenery that invites the tourist […]
The Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association was incorporated in 1895 “for the general promotion of religious, scientific and educational interests.”1 Each summer, for almost two weeks in July, the association conducted assemblies on the grounds of Gladstone Park in Oregon City. According to its promotional programs, the shaded, seventy-four-acre park with “scenery that invites the tourist from distant lands” boasted “the largest auditorium west of the Rocky mountains,” seating three thousand, with “restaurants, postoffice and telephone on the grounds.” Its program was “second only to the great New York Chautauqua,” with “speakers of national fame” and numerous departments of instruction ranging from music, elocution, art, and kindergarten to the Bible, physical culture, botany, entomology, and English literature. Each season saw special days organized: Christian Endeavor Day, Y.M.C.A. Day, Patriotic Day, College Day, William Jennings Bryan Day, Joaquin Miller Day, and so on. These special days notwithstanding, “[e]very day presents a program complete in itself of science, music, art, wit, oratory, stereoptican views, bicycle riding and athletics.” The chautauqua’s expenses were “the lowest of any assembly in the world”: $1.50 bought a season ticket that included camping privileges. The “wise” patron who sought a “sylvan camping spot” was assured that “a city of tents will be laid out in regular streets and avenues,” while the “fastidious” guest who preferred a luxurious hotel was reassured that Portland was only forty minutes away. From its inception, the Chautauqua hosted a Woman’s Day, “a congress of women interested in all progress, temperance, equal suffrage and missions,” and women speakers were a familiar sight on the platform.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_2_102" id="identifier_2_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The zenith of female oratory may have been the 1905 assembly, fortuitously held on the heels of the N.A.W.S.A. convention in Portland and coincident with the Lewis and Clark Exposition, when Anna Howard Shaw, Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman, and Florence Kelley all lectured.">2 Also from its inception, Scott Duniway headed the Chautauqua’s equal suffrage department and contributed mightily to the success of Woman’s Day.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_3_102" id="identifier_3_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Apparently the suffrage department experienced an occasional hiatus, perhaps for political reasons. When, following the calamity of 1906, Scott Duniway returned to “still hunt” methods of agitation, all was quiet on the Chautauqua front as well; the programs for 1908 and 1909 list no activity, for example. But in 1912, even though recovering from pneumonia and blood-poisoning in her leg, she chaired a suffrage forum on Woman’s Day, less than four months before the election that finally would bestow the franchise upon the women of Oregon (Moynihan, Rebel 214-15). Abigail spoke on other topics as well: In 1894, she had discussed the labor unrest occasioned by the panic of the previous year in a lost speech entitled, “Avoid the cause of strikes” (see Mss 1530, Chautauquas-Misc., OR Hist. Soc., particularly the folders containing the association’s stock book and programs).">3 Saturday, July 18–the penultimate day of the 1908 assembly–was Patriotic Day. A “special program” in the morning was followed by an address by Bishop Robert McIntyre of Los Angeles on “The Evolution of Abraham Lincoln” at 2:00, “reunions at various headquarters” at 3:30, and fireworks at 9:30 that evening. Abigail spoke at the reunion of the Grand Army of the Republic that afternoon.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_4_102" id="identifier_4_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Founded in Decatur, Illinois, on April 6, 1866, by Benjamin F. Stephenson, the Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization of Union veterans of the Civil War that was closely allied with Republican party politics, especially during Reconstruction. By 1890, it had over 400,000 members (Corning 102; Glenn B. Knight, “Brief History of the Grand Army of the Republic“; “Grand Army of the Republic“). Probably some time after the fact, Abigail wrote that this speech was given “before a company of soldiers” in July, 1908. She refers to the GAR in the speech (Oregon City Enterprise 17 July 1908; Oregon City Courier 17 and 24 July 1908; Oregonian 8-20 July 1908). Surprisingly, she is not listed in the 1908 program (Kingston).">4 In treating the topic of women and war, this speech ranges widely over a number of related subjects, from aggression in humans and other animals to life in the single-sex army.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_5_102" id="identifier_5_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This was not the first time that Scott Duniway had voiced her views on men, women, and war. Equal rights advocates frequently were confronted with the anti-suffragist objection that women voting would lead to women soldiering, and Scott Duniway was no exception. On the first day of a Woman’s Congress in Portland, held twelve years earlier (June 8, 1896), she had answered this objection this way: “‘I don’t believe there is a married man in this church who will not testify to the fact that women can fight, vote or no vote.’ Woman, she said, was not an angel, and it was well she was not, for if she were she would hardly be a congenial companion to her mate, the average man of today. After courtship and marriage, man always found that the woman had one thing stronger than her ‘will;’ it was her ‘won’t.’ Men were exempt from military duty on account of stature, too short, or infirm, crippled, bow-legged, knock-kneed. These and many more defects saved them from serving as soldiers, but it did not disenfranchise him from voting. Give women the ballot and you remove the greatest incentive for war” (Pacific Empire 11 June 1896).">5 Her central argument is that women should not be excluded from the army camp because the “mother instinct” is essential to purify camp conditions and save soldiers from “scarlet women” and the “social evil,” prostitution. Moreover, the case of the army is employed as an object lesson for the purpose of illustrating her broader, long-held and oft-expressed views on the complementarity and equality of the sexes. The manner in which she develops these ideas here is noteworthy for three principal reasons. First, this speech illustrates well Scott Duniway’s recurrent appeals to nature. Woven throughout is a metaphor of “pure air” that naturalizes the relations between the sexes; in this metaphor, nitrogen and oxygen stand for masculine and feminine, and the proper mix of genders is said to be as requisite for social health as is the proper mix of these complementary gases for biological health. Further, citing numerous examples in other species, she suggests that female “leadership” is entirely natural. These appeals are to a more universal nature than is her habit when celebrating the region of the Pacific Northwest, but they are similar. Relatedly, this speech illustrates Scott Duniway’s featuring of the scene as the source of motivation. She takes an evolutionary view of the purgation of war from the human species because, she concedes, “man is a fighting animal.” Moreover, when discussing the camp conditions that she wishes to cleanse, she exonerates agents as their cause, asking her audience to blame neither the “scarlet women” nor the soldiers; instead, she attributes their cause to the scene, in this case a general, improper societal mix of gender roles. In these ways, Scott Duniway emphasizes the natural and social scenes as cause of human action. Third, this speech wavers between principle and expediency and, in so doing, prefigures the contemporary feminist problem of difference. On one hand, while eschewing her typical arguments about Constitutional rights, Scott Duniway nonetheless bases the case for equal rights in lessons of nature that are equally matters of principle, i.e., nature requires it (indeed, it is worth remembering that the Enlightenment doctrine of natural rights underlay the Constitutional principles). On the other hand, equal rights also are defended on the basis of expediency, i.e., what women’s presence will do to benefit the army and soldiers. Lurking behind these disparate appeals is the dilemma that contemporary feminism knows as the problem of difference; that is, are men and women fundamentally the same, or fundamentally different? Arguments from principle flow most easily from the former assumption, and arguments from expediency from the latter. Scott Duniway, again, wavers. She claims that her argument is not a “panegyric upon woman, as woman,” because women are no better or worse than men. However, she also distinguishes the two, claiming that women, unlike men, are not by nature fighting animals. In pursuing both lines of argument simultaneously, Scott Duniway exemplifies the basic tension that even modern feminists struggle to resolve. The text is taken from a typescript in Scrapbook #2 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. This typescript is of a rough, unpolished draft, with a number of errors that I have endeavored to correct. The typescript also is corrupt, with missing text, in two places. As all pure air must contain proper proportions of the two elements of oxygen and nitrogen, so all associations of the human family, in war as well as in peace, must contain proper proportions of masculinity and femininity, or they will endanger their own best welfare by engendering poisonous conditions that necessarily work mental, moral and physical harm to the entire race. When we read the pages of history, reeking as they do with details of carnage and devastation, we are so deeply impressed with the horror of it all that we have no need to be reminded that man is a fighting animal. Yet, when seen at his best, as you always see him when the women he most respects and reveres are present, we are glad to note not only the total subjection of the antagonistic spirit within him that engenders war but the active presence of that protecting chivalry and innate patriotism which so arouse our admiration in times of peace that, much as we shrink from the idea of carnage so long as it does not seen inevitable, we do not hesitate, when protest is no longer possible, to adjust our best endeavors, so far as they will let us, to the amelioration of their condition when war begins. I am not here as a theorist, to denounce war, or declare it, under all circumstances unnecessary, or unavoidable. The races of men have yet many centuries of experience before them ere swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and nations shall learn war no more. And, since man is a fighting animal; and since all that is (or was) originally savage and brutal in his nature must be eliminated through the gradual processes of evolution ere we can reach that higher civilization of which the philanthropist is dreaming; and, since men and women together constitute the human family, and are as necessary to each-other as oxygen and hydrogen are to water, or oxygen and nitrogen to air, if they are to be kept pure and self-purifying, they must not be subjected to unnatural separation and indeed cannot be without deleterious results, it logically follows that the mother-instinct, which enacts so necessary a part in the procreation of the races that without it there could be no soldiers, the co-leadership of sagacious, motherly women cannot be denied with impunity when preparations are in progress for mobilizing or deporting great bodies of men in times of war. We all know that when the proper circulation of air is prevented by any sort of mechanical contrivance, so confining it that it has no natural opportunity to purify itself, it will self-engender noxious gases and poisonous vapors which cause death when inhaled. But how many of us stop to think that the unnatural confinement of men away from the free and natural association with good women, to enjoy which is their inalienable right, causes the deplorable results we so often encounter in the physical wreck of the soldier boy, who left his mother’s side in the proud consciousness of an unstained manhood, only to encounter the vitiated atmosphere of the scarlet woman, who is as sure to loiter in the wake of armies as impure air and water are sure to self-engender poisonous gases if unnaturally conditioned. It has not been very long since the very flower of our young manhood were mobilized for a considerable time at one of the rallying points not so far from Oregon but members of our Emergency Corps, were able to visit them in camp.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_6_102" id="identifier_6_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A reference to the Spanish-American War. The Oregon Emergency Corps, founded in April, 1898, was a woman’s relief society formed for the purpose of supplying, and providing aid and comfort to, the Second Regiment, Oregon Volunteers. Initially, the soldiers mobilized at the Irvington racetrack in Portland, renamed “Camp McKinley.” In May, they removed to the Presidio in San Francisco, where they prepared to ship out to Manila (Levi Young, “History”; Levi Young, “Oregon”).">6 I heard one of these noble, self-sacrificing women say, afterwards that an epidemic of what the army surgeon called measles had broken out in the camp, and many of the dear boys, who were surprised to find themselves down with the infection when they supposed themselves immune-having had measles at home, had no measles at all; but the vulture-like women who tarried in the outskirts of the camp understood! Don’t blame the soldier boys, dear prudish men and women! Don’t even the scarlet woman, who like the fire-damp is the natural result of poisonous environments; but do seek a remedy in the healthful and moral co-association of the sexes, everywhere. I had the pleasure of listening not long ago, to an instructive course of lectures, given in Portland, under the auspices of our Woman’s Club, by the eminent naturalist, Mr. Seton Thompson [sic].<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_7_102" id="identifier_7_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946): self-taught biologist, nature artist, and writer; a.k.a. “Black Wolf”; born Ernest Evan Thompson in Durham, England; emigrated to Canada, settling near Lindsay, Ontario, 1866; removed to Toronto, 1870, where began observing and gathering materials for book on Canadian birds; attended Ontario School of Art and, briefly, Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in London before moving to western Manitoba, 1882; wrote more than sixty books, almost four hundred stories and illustrations for magazines including Century, St. Nicholas, and Scribner’s; especially interested in wolves; married Grace Gallatin, daughter of Albert J. Gallatin, California steel and fuel magnate, 1896; Wild Animals I Have Known, 1898, made him a celebrity; founded Woodcraft League, teaching children to emulate Indians’ respect and appreciation for nature, which merged into Boy Scouts, 1910, Seton authoring first handbook; resigned in protest of militaristic turn in Boy Scouts, 1915; divorced Gallatin and married long-time associate Julia Moss Buttree, 1935; founded Seton College of Indian Wisdom, later Seton Institute of Indian Lore, near Santa Fe, New Mexico (“The Ernest Thompson Seton Pages”).">7 The lectures were illustrated by numerous snap-shot presentations, on canvas, of the lives and habitats of our near relations, the so-called lower animals, which furnished much food for thought among the auditors. He proved over and over again, by the unerring snap-shot of the camera, that the natural and only well-ordered life of animals is officered by the sagacious mature mother of flock or herd, whose wisdom and foresight in providing for the common protection is never questioned. By what subtlety of reasoning they make their selections of leadership we [who] do not understand their language may not know; but the camera has settled the fact that they are chosen; and those leaders are always of the mother, instead of the father sex. So at variance [were8] those true-to-life portrayals of the camera with age-encrusted theories and practices of men that it was no wonder the picture of a mother doe in a vast herd of elk, leading her thousands of followers of both sexes and all ages to places of safety, among the snow-clad fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, while the antlered bucks tarried in the rear to fight each-other to a finish, brought storms of laughter and applause from a sex trained for ages in an opposite theory; nor that your humble speaker, who had but recently exhausted purse and nerve and brain in an almost, but not yet successful endeavor to induce men to make a beginning in Oregon to restore the long-entrammeled mother-instinct to its pristine place in the arena of life and liberty9, it brought tears that could with difficulty be held inaudible. And I think the best-deserved compliments I have ever received in my life–they certainly were the most gratifying-[were] the voluntary tributes of wise and thoughtful men, who after hearing the lectures and witnessing the illustrations, met me in the vestibule of the theater, and afterwards in the street or at my home and told me that they had instinctively thought of me and my life-long teachings as the pictures were thrown upon the canvas, and they had received a clearer comprehension of what ought to be the accepted relations between the sexes in the human family than they had previously realized. Dear friends, will you pardon this little display of egotism? Men, Soldiers, brethren! You who have had experience with big herds of horses, bands of cattle and flocks of sheep; have you ever noticed the wisdom and sagacity of an old belled mare? Have you ever observed the certainty with which an old belled cow will guide her band to a place of safety in the face of a blinding storm? And, conversely, did you never see a flock of sheep follow a belled wether over a precipice–leading them pell-mell to destruction? And, did you not wonder, at such a time, why the owner of the sheep had not placed the bell upon the neck of a motherly old ewe? I know you will say the animals follow the bell, and do not think of the leader; but I ask you in all seriousness, did anybody ever bell the mother-leaders of the untamed herds of the wilderness, where nothing but a camera can catch them? The poet who attributed the rhythm of the wild goose’s “honk, honk,” as he leads the shaped flock through the regions of the air, made better verse than reason, as the camera now teaches with unerring shot, or as the hunter proves when he dissects the leader whose life he has taken with his gun. The leader is now said to be, in such cases–nothing but a goose! William Tell’s apple and George Washington’s hatchet are not the only fables in history. Once, on a great parade day, in the city of Washington, about a dozen years ago, it is said that our famous war eagle, Old Abe, whom many of you will remember as having once been on exhibition in Oregon, while riding proudly at the head of the procession, distinguished himself and discomfited his regiment by laying an egg! There was a great effort made to keep the incident a secret; but women, who had no interest in hushing it up, got hold of the story and wisely thought it too good to keep; so they delight in repeating it at women’s conventions, and all sensible, fair-dealing men have learned to appreciate and enjoy the joke. Whether it will teach them a needed lesson is another question; but I have my hopes. I hope no man will imagine for a moment that I underrate the sex to which the Grand Army belongs. You who are at all familiar with my 30 years’ work with pen and tongue need not be again assured of my loyalty to men. All good women like men a great deal better than they can or will like women. There is nothing more unlovable in life than a man-hater–unless it be a woman-hater. Why such monstrosities are born, or why, if so unfortunate as to be born, they do not loathe themselves to death, I cannot tell; but I do believe they are not numerous in any community; and I know you may search for them in vain among the gray haired mothers of our soldiers. I proudly confess great admiration for the soldier. The man who endangers his life by going to war stirs the mother-heart as no other being can. Never a man has lived who has not by the very fact of his existence, imperiled the life and handicapped the earlier years of his mother. The love of country cannot equal the love of any man’s mother. And when he, by enlisting in his country’s service, goes forth into an untried world, to endure the hardships and per- [sic]10 from which it has been her chief concern to shield him from babyhood when he loses life or limb in the face of shot and shell, or falls a victim to the deadly ambush of a treacherous foe; when the gallant officer imperils his life in battle, or fever or other deadly contagion strikes her dear one low, the loving sympathy of every mother’s heart is stirred to its profoundest depths. Soldiers, brethren! We glory in your achievements, we honor you patriotism, we exult in your promotion! We lovingly and patiently nurse you when sick or disabled, and we follow you tearfully and longingly, to the very gates of death. When you fall in battle we bemoan the final tragedy as only mothers can. But, is this all war means to women? Think of the terrible suspense we endure while awaiting tidings of your fate! Think of the enforced inaction that enhances our anxiety! of the suspense that chills the heart and chokes the utterance as women gather their children and grandchildren around them when the tidings come that too often clothe the mother soul with the blackness of despair! Think, too, of the double duty that descends upon the bowed shoulders of the elderly matron, who, having struggled through all the earlier years of her devoted life to rear and educate her son–cheerfully exercising self-denial of every sort for his material benefit till her right hand loses its strength and her eye its luster–think of her, awaiting the dreadful tidings that at last come, announcing the fate of the pride of her life, who was to have been the stay and solace of her old age! Think of all this and then, do you ask what war means to women? And, if it could be possible for us to assist you in alleviating any of the horrors of war, just as it has been our province to endow you with being, can you not see how vastly more useful we might be to you and humanity at large if, in our declining years–our cares for a young family having long been out grown, we might be free to use our accumulated mother-wisdom in so assisting you in the management of the home side of the army life that our soldier boys, the flower of the Nation’s manhood might be shielded from the poisoned dreck11 of the scarlet woman whose oxygen of life has been consumed by the pent atmosphere that excludes pure women from the camp? Can you not see how vastly more useful we might be to you, to our sons and to the world if we had the power to utilize the feminine forces you lack in making provision for the comfort and well-being of great armies in the very beginning of a terrible campaign? My esteemed friend, Mrs. Evelyn H. Belden<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_12_102" id="identifier_12_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Three-term president, Iowa state suffrage association and chair, legislative committee, 1898-1900; helped organize county conventions in Minnesota and Nebraska, 1899; society editor, Sioux City Tribune, 1900-02; wife of Walter S. Belden, who came to Sioux City, 1887, as bookkeeper for Dunn Collecting and Protective Union, later worked for Wyoming Pacific Improvement Company and Pacific Shortline Railroad, became cashier of Leeds Improvement and Land Company, 1891, president, Globe Printing Company, 1894, and clerk of district court, 1896-1902; moved to Washington D.C., 1902 and spoke at N.A.W.S.A. convention there, 1904; “witty and vivacious” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 632-34, 774, 804, 5: 109; M. Johnson; Noun 244).">12, of Sioux City, Iowa, tells a graphic story of the conditions in which she found a famous camp in the sunny Southland during the opening months of our late war with Spain.<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_13_102" id="identifier_13_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Apparently Belden’s talk on “Women and War” of nine years before, at the 1899 N.A.W.S.A. convention in Grand Rapids (the very convention at which Scott Duniway delivered “How to Win the Ballot”), made an impression on Abigail, who recounts it at some length here. The Southern camp to which Belden refers is Chickamauga, Georgia (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 339-40).">13 Her son, a soldier, was stricken with fever, and she, by virtue of some sort of manipulation that men call a “pull” which husband enjoyed as a political manager was admitted to the camp to nurse the boy. Hundreds of other mothers sought access to the camp on the same errand, but were denied the dearest wish of their hearts in every case in absence of the pull. But, though admitted, she was not welcomed by the officers in command, who bluntly told her that “decent women had no business there!” Nobody knows better than a wise mother that it is manifestly impossible to admit women and children to soldiers’ encampments, as a rule. We all admit that woman’s normal sphere is within the home. You show me a wise, patriotic woman and I will show you a woman [who] looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. There are thousands of just such house keepers and home makers in the land, whose hearts go out to the hungry, wounded, sick and suffering soldier, whom it would be as impossible as unnecessary [to] admit personal participation in army life, and many thousands more who must do double duty at home while husband and father are abs[ent] in camp, skirmish and field. Women are not seeking or demanding impossible or impracticable positions. But every mother knows that place where her boy goes ought to [be] a perfectly safe and “decent” place for any mother to visit. The way to purify confined air is provide for proper ventilation. The way to destroy the death damp [at] the bottom of an infected well is to [turn14] in enough of pure water to flush out the infection. Of course all men know that we don’t mean to say that all the air surrounding the planet and all the water of the lakes and rivers will be at once diverted from their accustomed channels and henceforth do nothing else but the thing that emergency requires. It is only when the remedy of pure womanhood is suggested as a natural panacea for the “indecent” conditions of camps and armies that most men get frightened and call a halt, lest women would have less sense than the water, or the air. Mrs. Belden, like Florence Nightingale<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_15_102" id="identifier_15_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1820-1910): English hospital reformer; nurse during Crimean War; formed institution for training of nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital; developed “polar-area diagram,” similar to pie chart, showing that improved sanitation decreases hospital mortality rates; developed Model Hospital Statistical Form; Royal Statistical Society, 1858; honorary member, American Statistical Association, 1874; worked for army sanitary reform, improvement of nursing, and public health in India (Cynthia Audain, “Florence Nightingale”).">15, Mary A. Livermore<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_16_102" id="identifier_16_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).">16 and Clara Barton<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_17_102" id="identifier_17_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).">17, who at the beginning of their career in armies failed to see, or understand the sneers of men in authority, exercised judicious blindness. She held herself wisely oblivious to the coarse allusions that smote her ears, never heeding them till her son was convalescent. Then she returned to civil life and took the lecture platform, and remains withal, a charming womanly woman, and is still the same devoted wife and mother and the same acknowledged leader in what the world calls “Society” as she was before the war. No one who hears her story of the mismanagement of that Southern camp can remain oblivious to the crying need of woman as home-maker, in times of war as she has ever been in times of peace. No one who has heard Mrs. Belden’s vivid recital of the mis-management of that Southern camp can remain oblivious to the crying need of the councils and presence of Woman as a home maker in times of war as she has served her loved ones in times of peace. Now, friend: If you were other than the gallant defenders of the truth that your membership in this organization proclaims you, I should expect to hear these remarks construed into a report like this: “The eminent lady found fault with everything connected with the army and its work. She made the gallant soldier and his corps of able commanders appear as a lot of fools, or knaves who don’t know enough, aside from what some woman tell[s] them, to protect themselves from the weather.” I have been as badly misrepresented as this many a time by other men, but never by the Grand Army of the Republic, in camp or anywhere else. For this reason I am not afraid to repeat to you some of the facts and conclusions of Mrs. Belden’s recitals, only wishing you might have opportunity to hear more. What mother of men says she “would establish a camp for thousands of soldier boys, under a broiling Southern sky, six miles from water, where the only means of had to be hauled in rickety ambulances, by spans of superannuated mules?”<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_18_102" id="identifier_18_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cf. Belden: “If there had been women on the commission, would they have pitched the camp five miles from water? Or provided only one horse and one mule to bring the water for two companies? . . . It is said that suffragists do not know how to keep house. If so, the men who managed the war must all be suffragists” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 340). Clearly, Belden’s reputation as “vivacious and witty” was well-deserved (Noun 244).">18 We all know that this is a commercial age. And, when the markets get glutted because there comes a time when there are more workers than there is work, there comes a cry of over production. So men starve when barns are bursting and the combination known as the Trust makes terms with transportation companies to even things up at the expense of the already well squeezed consumer. It was for reasons like these that Southern camp got its anomalous location. And–there were others. Can we forget the “embalmed beef” of the Alger dynasty, or the equally flagrant scandals of Kansas, Cuba and the Philippines growing out of transactions that promptly got great coats of whitewash, while the noble philanthropists who “peached” got their labor for their pains?<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_19_102" id="identifier_19_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1898, President William McKinley appointed a commission, headed by Major General Grenville Dodge, to investigate charges that neglect had led to appalling conditions in military camps, including supply shortages and rampant outbreaks of disease. On December 21, in testimony before this commission, Major General Nelson Miles accused Secretary of War Russell A. Alger and the Commissary Department of knowingly disbursing more than 337 tons of chemically contaminated meat to U.S. troops in Cuba and Puerto Rico, resulting in numerous cases of dysentery, diarrhea, and even death. Although Miles’ charges were supported by many military officials, including Theodore Roosevelt, neither the Dodge Commission nor a subsequent court of inquiry could determine that the beef was tainted, and Miles was censured (Dawn Ottevaere, “Embalmed Beef Scandal,” in Tucker 204-06).">19 Mrs. Belden says, further: Would women orderlies loiter in the shade of barracks, cutting red tape over trifles, refusing to deal out ice and medicines to soldier boys dying of fever, because, forsooth, some officer higher in rank was away from his post, dancing attendance upon thoughtless girls–on leave of absence?” And the women of the Red Cross society are asking, from all points of the compass, would women officers, if co-associated with the army in the Philippines, think it necessary to enact the part of the procurer in a vain attempt to “regulate” the social evil in the army in such a way that the lower propensities of soldiers might be fostered under official supervision at the expense of the health, purity and often the wretched lives of the unfortunate women of the lower world who, if the supposed-to-be one sexed conditions of the . . .20 does not poison enough of women to supply the demand have recently been ordered as recruits from China and other foreign countries where girls are sold as slaves to the basest uses. Again, please notice that I am not making an outcry against men or armies, but against the unnatural environments our human institutions, wherein men might, if they would, (and they will, some day), pattern after the sagacious methods of the brutes of the forest and plain, and the fowls of the air, who entrust all sanitary regulations of their well-ordered lives to maternal leaders, with whom the father half of herd and flock and band are always in accord, and who never fight or quarrel with the females of their race, and recognize no such thing as a “social evil”. But you will insist, though I do not dispute you, that “woman’s sphere is within the home.” For that matter, so is man’s. The man who has no home is like the antlered stag, which, beaten at every turn by his more fortunate competitors, lingers for a few miserable years on the outskirts of the tribe wherein he was born, and then steals away and dies. Some day, every man will be required to be sufficiently industrious and frugal to have earned and deserved a home; and then women, being equal in authority with men, will see that they have homes. Just now, only a small minority of either sex have a home in which to hold a “sphere.” All men are not soldiers, and only a few men can hold offices, in the army or any where else. Equal rights and opportunities among each other have not destroyed the home instinct among men, neither will such rights among women destroy the home instincts of women; but equal rights between the sexes will enable some men and some women to work together, officially, for the common weal; and the intuition of women and the slower-going sagacity of man will devise means to cultivate the higher nature of man, so that he will as voluntarily restrain his lower nature in the army as elsewhere. I know some of you will say that my dream is Utopian. But the advance dream of every inventor, whether in the field of mechanics or morals has ever been pronounced Utopian. It is said that the first steamship that crossed the Atlantic brought over a lot of scientifically gotten pamphlets to show that such a feat could never be accomplished. We are, by nature great stumbling blocks of exclamation points. Men now living can tell us of the convulsed condition of affairs in Boston when some fool-hardy person first insisted upon allowing girls to attend the public schools, the objection being, first, that their morals would be corrupted by associating with boys, and, secondly that educated women would refuse to attend to their domestic duties and leave the men and children to die of neglect! The good deacons of Plainfield in New Jersey broke up a Sunday school in the Baptist church of that city when Dr. Clemence Lozier<a href="https://asduniway.org/willamette-valley-chautauqua-assembly-circa-july-18-1908/#footnote_21_102" id="identifier_21_102" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1812-1888): physician, reformer; born Plainfield, New Jersey; orphaned, 1824; married Abraham Witton Lozier, 1830; conducted charity work for poor in Albany after husband’s death, 1837; graduated from Syracuse Eclectic College with medical degree, 1853; successfully lobbied for first woman’s medical school in New York State, Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, funded by proceeds of her practice, 1863; president, New York City Woman Suffrage Society, 1873-86; president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1877-78; died of angina pectoris (Cantor; “Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier“; “Clemence Sophia Lozier”).">21 was teaching the little girls to read in her father’s church, because they said, if they learned to read and write they would, when old enough to marry, “Forget their husbands’ names and get their money out of the bank!” Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, but a word to the wise is sufficient. “How,” you ask, “are changes such as you suggest to be brought about? Women have no knowledge of the arts of war.” I answer “They need no such knowledge.” Women, in natural conditions are not fighting animals. It is their business to bestow life–not to destroy it. It is their business to sustain the life they bestow–not to invent ways and means [to] cut it off. First of all, I would have woman free! Free to judge for herself as to what her own destiny or mission shall be. I would have her just as free to work out her destiny as man is, leaving results to the natural law that causes the survival of the fittest. For that reason I . . .22 Think you that the mother leaders in the animal kingdom would ever be chosen to guide and protect the herds, if they had to be chosen by the separate vote of the buck, the bull, the horse or the gander? Depend upon it wise would be chosen to do the right kind of army work whenever it was not possible to prevent war, provided both men and women had a voice in the choosing. And they would not be more numerous either than officers in the army. I would have such elderly women as Mary A. Livermore and Clara Barton to establish a training school for Grandmothers who had passed a competitive examination, who, when graduated should be placed in charge of hospital supplies, including luxuries under such rules as would lessen the wide gap between the fare of the soldier and the officer. I am not here to pass a panegyric upon woman, as woman. Women are by nature no better and no worse than their fathers and sons. But I am here to declare, and I am sure I have over and over proved my contention, that the equal and free association between the sexes in the human family is as necessary as it is in the animal world; “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder”, saith the higher law. I am not here to demand equality of opportunity for men and women for the sake of women alone, or of men alone, but for the sake of both the sexes. The voter[s] of Oregon favored us with over 48% of the vote upon our proposed Constitutional Amendment in 1900.23 Had they gone just a little further, (as they surely will next time) my humble sermon today would have been devoted to considering ways and means to “Mother” all armies, of which our late Emergency Corps gave you merely an inkling when men in authority allowed them opportunity. Men, Soldiers, Brethren! We appeal to you as veterans, tried and true! whose gallantry we do not question, whose loyalty to the mothers that bore you we do not doubt! We ask you in all earnestness to rise above the narrow, pessimistic view of a great principle of liberty that men have encrusted over with false conditions they attribute to the science of government which as now constituted is as compared to what it ought to be, as confined and poisoned air is to the free atmosphere of Heaven, or as the death damp in the bottom of an unused well is to the free water that feeds our Oregon Metropolis from snowy heights of our old Mt. Hood. Let woman, who has been your joy, Your good right hand and brave defender, Through all your days as babe and boy, And never asked you to surrender, Take her true place, your own beside When war alarms or woes betide. Till war, in wiser generations Shall yield to peaceful arbitrations. NOTES Apparently the assembly met in practice at least one year before incorporation, and perhaps as early as 1892. 1908 was generally recognized as the fifteenth annual assembly. The zenith of female oratory may have been the 1905 assembly, fortuitously held on the heels of the N.A.W.S.A. convention in Portland and coincident with the Lewis and Clark Exposition, when Anna Howard Shaw, Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman, and Florence Kelley all lectured. Apparently the suffrage department experienced an occasional hiatus, perhaps for political reasons. When, following the calamity of 1906, Scott Duniway returned to “still hunt” methods of agitation, all was quiet on the Chautauqua front as well; the programs for 1908 and 1909 list no activity, for example. But in 1912, even though recovering from pneumonia and blood-poisoning in her leg, she chaired a suffrage forum on Woman’s Day, less than four months before the election that finally would bestow the franchise upon the women of Oregon (Moynihan, Rebel 214-15). Abigail spoke on other topics as well: In 1894, she had discussed the labor unrest occasioned by the panic of the previous year in a lost speech entitled, “Avoid the cause of strikes” (see Mss 1530, Chautauquas-Misc., OR Hist. Soc., particularly the folders containing the association’s stock book and programs). Founded in Decatur, Illinois, on April 6, 1866, by Benjamin F. Stephenson, the Grand Army of the Republic was a fraternal organization of Union veterans of the Civil War that was closely allied with Republican party politics, especially during Reconstruction. By 1890, it had over 400,000 members (Corning 102; Glenn B. Knight, “Brief History of the Grand Army of the Republic“; “Grand Army of the Republic“). Probably some time after the fact, Abigail wrote that this speech was given “before a company of soldiers” in July, 1908. She refers to the GAR in the speech (Oregon City Enterprise 17 July 1908; Oregon City Courier 17 and 24 July 1908; Oregonian 8-20 July 1908). Surprisingly, she is not listed in the 1908 program (Kingston). This was not the first time that Scott Duniway had voiced her views on men, women, and war. Equal rights advocates frequently were confronted with the anti-suffragist objection that women voting would lead to women soldiering, and Scott Duniway was no exception. On the first day of a Woman’s Congress in Portland, held twelve years earlier (June 8, 1896), she had answered this objection this way: “‘I don’t believe there is a married man in this church who will not testify to the fact that women can fight, vote or no vote.’ Woman, she said, was not an angel, and it was well she was not, for if she were she would hardly be a congenial companion to her mate, the average man of today. After courtship and marriage, man always found that the woman had one thing stronger than her ‘will;’ it was her ‘won’t.’ Men were exempt from military duty on account of stature, too short, or infirm, crippled, bow-legged, knock-kneed. These and many more defects saved them from serving as soldiers, but it did not disenfranchise him from voting. Give women the ballot and you remove the greatest incentive for war” (Pacific Empire 11 June 1896). A reference to the Spanish-American War. The Oregon Emergency Corps, founded in April, 1898, was a woman’s relief society formed for the purpose of supplying, and providing aid and comfort to, the Second Regiment, Oregon Volunteers. Initially, the soldiers mobilized at the Irvington racetrack in Portland, renamed “Camp McKinley.” In May, they removed to the Presidio in San Francisco, where they prepared to ship out to Manila (Levi Young, “History”; Levi Young, “Oregon”). Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946): self-taught biologist, nature artist, and writer; a.k.a. “Black Wolf”; born Ernest Evan Thompson in Durham, England; emigrated to Canada, settling near Lindsay, Ontario, 1866; removed to Toronto, 1870, where began observing and gathering materials for book on Canadian birds; attended Ontario School of Art and, briefly, Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in London before moving to western Manitoba, 1882; wrote more than sixty books, almost four hundred stories and illustrations for magazines including Century, St. Nicholas, and Scribner’s; especially interested in wolves; married Grace Gallatin, daughter of Albert J. Gallatin, California steel and fuel magnate, 1896; Wild Animals I Have Known, 1898, made him a celebrity; founded Woodcraft League, teaching children to emulate Indians’ respect and appreciation for nature, which merged into Boy Scouts, 1910, Seton authoring first handbook; resigned in protest of militaristic turn in Boy Scouts, 1915; divorced Gallatin and married long-time associate Julia Moss Buttree, 1935; founded Seton College of Indian Wisdom, later Seton Institute of Indian Lore, near Santa Fe, New Mexico (“The Ernest Thompson Seton Pages”). The text, in error, reads “with.” A reference to the failed 1906 suffrage campaign. Probably “perils” is meant. The typescript reads, erroneously, “treck.” “Dreck” seems to fit her usage best; a second alternative might be “reck.” Three-term president, Iowa state suffrage association and chair, legislative committee, 1898-1900; helped organize county conventions in Minnesota and Nebraska, 1899; society editor, Sioux City Tribune, 1900-02; wife of Walter S. Belden, who came to Sioux City, 1887, as bookkeeper for Dunn Collecting and Protective Union, later worked for Wyoming Pacific Improvement Company and Pacific Shortline Railroad, became cashier of Leeds Improvement and Land Company, 1891, president, Globe Printing Company, 1894, and clerk of district court, 1896-1902; moved to Washington D.C., 1902 and spoke at N.A.W.S.A. convention there, 1904; “witty and vivacious” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 632-34, 774, 804, 5: 109; M. Johnson; Noun 244). Apparently Belden’s talk on “Women and War” of nine years before, at the 1899 N.A.W.S.A. convention in Grand Rapids (the very convention at which Scott Duniway delivered “How to Win the Ballot”), made an impression on Abigail, who recounts it at some length here. The Southern camp to which Belden refers is Chickamauga, Georgia (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 339-40). The typescript misspells this “turin,” which is then crossed out and not replaced. (1820-1910): English hospital reformer; nurse during Crimean War; formed institution for training of nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital; developed “polar-area diagram,” similar to pie chart, showing that improved sanitation decreases hospital mortality rates; developed Model Hospital Statistical Form; Royal Statistical Society, 1858; honorary member, American Statistical Association, 1874; worked for army sanitary reform, improvement of nursing, and public health in India (Cynthia Audain, “Florence Nightingale”). Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62). Cf. Belden: “If there had been women on the commission, would they have pitched the camp five miles from water? Or provided only one horse and one mule to bring the water for two companies? . . . It is said that suffragists do not know how to keep house. If so, the men who managed the war must all be suffragists” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 340). Clearly, Belden’s reputation as “vivacious and witty” was well-deserved (Noun 244). In 1898, President William McKinley appointed a commission, headed by Major General Grenville Dodge, to investigate charges that neglect had led to appalling conditions in military camps, including supply shortages and rampant outbreaks of disease. On December 21, in testimony before this commission, Major General Nelson Miles accused Secretary of War Russell A. Alger and the Commissary Department of knowingly disbursing more than 337 tons of chemically contaminated meat to U.S. troops in Cuba and Puerto Rico, resulting in numerous cases of dysentery, diarrhea, and even death. Although Miles’ charges were supported by many military officials, including Theodore Roosevelt, neither the Dodge Commission nor a subsequent court of inquiry could determine that the beef was tainted, and Miles was censured (Dawn Ottevaere, “Embalmed Beef Scandal,” in Tucker 204-06). This represents a page break in the typescript. Although the pages before and after are numbered consecutively, a portion of text clearly is missing. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1812-1888): physician, reformer; born Plainfield, New Jersey; orphaned, 1824; married Abraham Witton Lozier, 1830; conducted charity work for poor in Albany after husband’s death, 1837; graduated from Syracuse Eclectic College with medical degree, 1853; successfully lobbied for first woman’s medical school in New York State, Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, funded by proceeds of her practice, 1863; president, New York City Woman Suffrage Society, 1873-86; president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1877-78; died of angina pectoris (Cantor; “Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier“; “Clemence Sophia Lozier”). This represents another page break between consecutively numbered pages where text nonetheless clearly is missing. Here Abigail pointedly ignores the calamity of 1906.
“THE POWERS OF THOUGHT” – October 6, 1907
In this second address before the Society of Bible Spiritualists, meeting in A.O.U.W. Temple1, Scott Duniway examines another dimension of the paranormal: hypnotism. Her immediate concern is the recent murder trial of Charles H. Reynolds in the shooting death of George Herbert Hibbins, who was having an affair with Reynolds’ wife, Lulu.2 Although Abigail thinks […]
In this second address before the Society of Bible Spiritualists, meeting in A.O.U.W. Temple1, Scott Duniway examines another dimension of the paranormal: hypnotism. Her immediate concern is the recent murder trial of Charles H. Reynolds in the shooting death of George Herbert Hibbins, who was having an affair with Reynolds’ wife, Lulu.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-powers-of-thought%e2%80%9d-october-6-1907/#footnote_2_100" id="identifier_2_100" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="On June 19, 1907, Reynolds, a former scout for General George Armstrong Custer and owner of the Natatorium Baths at Second and Washington in Portland, shot Hibbins (a.k.a. George Herbert), of Walla Walla, after discovering the music professor together with his wife in their home.">2 Although Abigail thinks that Mrs. Reynolds must have been under Hibbins’ “Svengalian spell,” she does not condone the woman’s actions on this account. In fact, she takes umbrage at those who have excused the woman’s weakness while laying all the villainy on the man. However, this is not because Abigail thinks that hypnotism is a fraud and the woman blameless. On the contrary, she takes for granted that hypnotism exists as a power of the mind, and that Hibbins’ use of this power was evil. But, she believes, Mrs. Reynolds was duty-bound to “parry” his hypnotic influence “by the power of her own thought and action.” Here is evident the same faith in knowledge and reason as antidote to evil, and the same emphasis on personal moral responsibility, that Abigail also displays in other contexts. Yet, it is ironic that, here, her faith is tempered by an image of frail, vulnerable, mentally overpowered womanhood. The text is taken from the Morning Oregonian of October 7, 1907, which quotes Abigail “in part”: It is related of God’s servant, Job, that, when suffering under dire affliction, the old man, in answer to a taunt, exclaimed: “Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and shall we not receive evil?” This afternoon, seeing in the papers that I was to lecture here this evening, I recalled the fact, previously forgotten, that in answer to a request from your president, by telephone, I had said that I would try to attend the meeting and possibly take part in a discussion on the power of thought for good and evil. I did not expect my theme to be dignified by the title of “lecture,” but since it has been so announced I will give you, briefly, some of my ideas upon one particular line of thought, known in these latter years as hypnotism. I think it will hardly be denied, in this era of demonstration, that hypnotism, like every other attribute of mind or thought, is a power for good, that in the keeping of unscrupulous persons may and often does become a power for evil. Believing, as I have learned to believe, that all evil is undeveloped good, and that it is ignorance of evil, of which the human family is so often the victim, I do not scruple to investigate, and as far as I am able, analyze every line of thought that current events is [sic] stimulating. I have been especially stirred by a recent event, resulting in murder, wherein a woman otherwise of blameless character was so far led astray by the evil designs of a man who had evidently made her the victim of hypnotism, that I restrained with difficulty a desire to submit to the newspapers an attempted analysis of this mysterious power, which no one in any way connected with the tragedy or trial seemed to understand, except, possibly, the evil-intentioned man who paid the penalty for his crime through the loss of his physical life. I am convinced that nothing but the lingering power of a Svengalian spell would have induced his unfortunate victim to throw restraint to the winds and, regardless of the presence of others, cast herself upon the clay-cold body of the villain who, even in death, held her will, or thought forces, spellbound. The letters written by this woman under the influence of this spell show her to have been not a bad woman at heart. Not a word did she pen in those letters against her wronged and outraged husband, and not a motive did she disclose from first to last other than blind obedience to a hypnotic power, as potent while it lasted as a virulent case of typhoid fever or confluent smallpox.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-powers-of-thought%e2%80%9d-october-6-1907/#footnote_3_100" id="identifier_3_100" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="When police arrived, Lulu at first denied being Mrs. Reynolds and then contended that Hibbins was present only for the purpose of putting some of her verses to music. Reynolds shot first and asked questions later, eventually confessing. Before he died, Hibbins corroborated Lulu’s account. The truth, however, was revealed when, unable to contain herself in the morgue, Lulu threw herself prostrate upon Hibbins’ corpse and kissed him on the lips; she subsequently confessed that the two had been intimate for several months and planned to elope. From jail, Reynolds professed his love for his wife and claimed that she must have been hypnotized, which Lulu denied. The salacious details were widely reported, and love letters were reprinted in the papers. Reynolds was charged with first-degree murder, but his defense classed Hibbins among the “human vipers who prey upon frail womanhood,” and Reynolds was acquitted in late September, just about two weeks before Abigail’s talk (Morning Oregonian 20-22 June 1907, 17-21 Sept. 1907; Sunday Oregonian 23 June 1907).">3 Quite frequently this form of hypnotism is dual in character, affecting two victims simultaneously, as in a case of “love at first sight,” when a youth and a maiden, with no legal barrier between them, joyfully accept each other for better or for worse at the marriage altar; and, shielded “till death doth them part,” by its mysterious power, they are ennobled to endure all the trials, as well as enjoying all the pleasures of life, till a ripe old age, in each other’s company. It is the greatest of blessings. But woe to the man or woman who enters the marriage relation when one or both the contracting parties has not been enthralled by this power of thought, if, among the ships that do not “pass in the night,” comes along an “affinity,” who professes and does not scruple to use hypnotic power to entice a man or woman–for both the sexes may be subject to its spell–causing an innocent victim of the disease to forsake, and for a time forget husband or wife, children and all else previously held sacred for the sake of an ephemeral impulse, so ruthless while it lasts as the thought power that enthralls it. Do not understand me as condoning the weakness of any man or woman who catches this unclean contagion. But I do most solemnly protest against the maudlin sentimentality that has become a part of our unwritten law, which excuses the woman in the case as weak, while all the villainy is charged up to the man. Any married woman understands the advances of a hypnotic prac[ti]tioner long before they become serious; it is her duty to parry them in such a way, by the power of her own thought and action, that the most designing villain will skulk away abashed. But, in a case like the one under review, where both parties have fallen victims to hypnotic disease and have lost the divinest of human attributes–self-control–it would, in my opinion, be far more salutary to lock them up together and give human nature a chance to effect a lasting cure by repulsion, which, in time, would surely come to their relief, than for an innocent or injured husband or wife to stain his hands in the blood of one and leave the other an incurable sufferer from a disease that, like alcoholism, can only be effectually cured by creating a chemical change in its victim, induced by compulsory overdoses of opportunity. I also deem it wise, while this theme of the power of thought is under discussion, to consider another case, wholly unlike the one just cited, of which the papers are full. In this case, also, maudlin public sentiment is endeavoring to shield a woman from the consequences of an act of which no man could be guilty, and which calls so loudly for a jury of women to sit in judgment upon it, that I do not wonder that papers like The Oregonian are analyzing her act and slowly coming to the conclusion, reached long ago by thoughtful mothers of men, that men are in no position to deal justly by a woman who uses the baleful influence of perverted sexual power to place public men in compromising positions.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-powers-of-thought%e2%80%9d-october-6-1907/#footnote_4_100" id="identifier_4_100" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ten days before this speech, on September 26, E. S. Radding, a local Labor party politico, heard a woman’s screams and, upon breaking down the door to a private office in the Hamilton building, discovered 20-year-old Belle Waymire in a compromising position with Portland Mayor Harry Lane. She claimed to be in his office innocently (seeking his assistance in recovering her child from the custody of her estranged husband’s parents), and that he had attacked her. He claimed that she and Radding had conspired to entrap him, in order to ruin his political fortunes and blackmail him. The papers followed the twists and turns in this unfolding case intently; the Oregonian reported daily from September 27 to October 4, consistently backing the Mayor’s story. Eventually, a grand jury indicted Waymire and Radding on charges of committing an act that “outrages public decency and is injurious to public morals.” At trial, both pled “not guilty,” but a jury needed only an hour to return a “guilty” verdict. The defendants appealed, on both substantive and procedural grounds. The case eventually reached the Oregon Supreme Court, which upheld their convictions (in State v. Waymire et al., 52 Or. 281, 25 Aug. 1908). To precisely what “maudlin public sentiment” Scott Duniway is referring is unclear, although, as she notes in the next paragraph, the Y.W.C.A. was rumored to have posted Waymire’s $750 bail, which it “indignantly” denied (Morning Oregonian 2 Oct. 1907). It bears emphasizing that Abigail felt that this case demonstrated the need for female jury service even though she (like the all-male jury that would convict Waymire) was convinced of Waymire’s guilt.">4 It is no excuse for a woman guilty of such conduct to say that she is weak. I blushed anew for my sex when I read in the evening papers that two organizations of women had stood sponsors for liberty, pending trial, of a woman who could be guilty of such an act. But, when I read their indignant denial I was overjoyed that the press should so readily correct the rumor and the accursed organizations so hastily demand it. The Oregonian manfully exposes the salacious wiles of a woman who, lost to all sense of honor or decency, lends herself to schemes with which men are powerless to cope. This is the evil side of hypnotism, or the power of thought perverted. Its cure is knowledge; its preventive is understanding. Properly controlled and understood the power of hypnotic thought is infinite for good. In the hands of the unscrupulous it is like dynamite. In the hands of the ignorant it is like a lighted match to a powder magazine. But when used with wisdom and discretion it is like the ether that pervades all space, or the electric power that lights and moves the world and runs the universe. NOTES The Ancient Order of United Workmen. On both the building and the order, see Walt Lockley, “Ancient Order of United Workmen Temple.” On June 19, 1907, Reynolds, a former scout for General George Armstrong Custer and owner of the Natatorium Baths at Second and Washington in Portland, shot Hibbins (a.k.a. George Herbert), of Walla Walla, after discovering the music professor together with his wife in their home. When police arrived, Lulu at first denied being Mrs. Reynolds and then contended that Hibbins was present only for the purpose of putting some of her verses to music. Reynolds shot first and asked questions later, eventually confessing. Before he died, Hibbins corroborated Lulu’s account. The truth, however, was revealed when, unable to contain herself in the morgue, Lulu threw herself prostrate upon Hibbins’ corpse and kissed him on the lips; she subsequently confessed that the two had been intimate for several months and planned to elope. From jail, Reynolds professed his love for his wife and claimed that she must have been hypnotized, which Lulu denied. The salacious details were widely reported, and love letters were reprinted in the papers. Reynolds was charged with first-degree murder, but his defense classed Hibbins among the “human vipers who prey upon frail womanhood,” and Reynolds was acquitted in late September, just about two weeks before Abigail’s talk (Morning Oregonian 20-22 June 1907, 17-21 Sept. 1907; Sunday Oregonian 23 June 1907). Ten days before this speech, on September 26, E. S. Radding, a local Labor party politico, heard a woman’s screams and, upon breaking down the door to a private office in the Hamilton building, discovered 20-year-old Belle Waymire in a compromising position with Portland Mayor Harry Lane. She claimed to be in his office innocently (seeking his assistance in recovering her child from the custody of her estranged husband’s parents), and that he had attacked her. He claimed that she and Radding had conspired to entrap him, in order to ruin his political fortunes and blackmail him. The papers followed the twists and turns in this unfolding case intently; the Oregonian reported daily from September 27 to October 4, consistently backing the Mayor’s story. Eventually, a grand jury indicted Waymire and Radding on charges of committing an act that “outrages public decency and is injurious to public morals.” At trial, both pled “not guilty,” but a jury needed only an hour to return a “guilty” verdict. The defendants appealed, on both substantive and procedural grounds. The case eventually reached the Oregon Supreme Court, which upheld their convictions (in State v. Waymire et al., 52 Or. 281, 25 Aug. 1908). To precisely what “maudlin public sentiment” Scott Duniway is referring is unclear, although, as she notes in the next paragraph, the Y.W.C.A. was rumored to have posted Waymire’s $750 bail, which it “indignantly” denied (Morning Oregonian 2 Oct. 1907). It bears emphasizing that Abigail felt that this case demonstrated the need for female jury service even though she (like the all-male jury that would convict Waymire) was convinced of Waymire’s guilt.
“THE VISIT OF NICODEMUS TO JESUS BY NIGHT” – Unknown
Although this archive might suggest that Scott Duniway’s public address was devoted almost exclusively to the topics of equal rights, the status of women, and prohibition, such was not the case. During the periodic economic upheavals of the late nineteenth century, for example, she lectured frequently on “Labor Unrest and Political Upheavals” and “Removing the […]
Although this archive might suggest that Scott Duniway’s public address was devoted almost exclusively to the topics of equal rights, the status of women, and prohibition, such was not the case. During the periodic economic upheavals of the late nineteenth century, for example, she lectured frequently on “Labor Unrest and Political Upheavals” and “Removing the Cause of Strikes.” Another talk in her repertoire was “Woman and the Bible.” She often entertained audiences by reminiscing about “The Life and Times of Col. E. D. Baker<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_1_98" id="identifier_1_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Edward Dickinson Baker (1811-1861): statesman, soldier, and orator; born London; emigrated to Philadelphia, 1816; entered law practice, Carrolton, Illinois, 1828; major during Black Hawk War, 1832; Lincoln’s closest friend, and law partner, 1837; Whig; Illinois legislature, 1837-45; U.S. Representative, 1845, 1849-51; distinguished himself in Mexican War, 1846; supervised construction of Panama railroad, 1851; moved to San Francisco, 1852, and gained high reputation as criminal lawyer and orator; by invitation, moved to Oregon, 1859, where, one year later, and despite Democratic opposition, the first state senate elected him Oregon’s first Republican Senator; “the foremost man in debate in that illustrious body”; colonel of a regiment of volunteers, killed in battle of Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, first northern officer to die in Civil War; “Excepting our own Webster, no man of modern times has been so successful as Baker in the forum, in the Senate, and before popular assemblies” (Corning 17; Shuck 63-83). Baker was a Scott family benefactor. In 1846 he extended credit to Tucker Scott, Abigail’s father, to buy the first circular sawmill west of Ohio, and three years later made the latter his exclusive agent for selling Page’s Portable Saw Mills throughout Illinois and Indiana, thereby substantially improving the family’s fortunes (Moynihan, Rebel 24).">1.” Unfortunately, such addresses have vanished almost completely.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_2_98" id="identifier_2_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Local newspapers commonly reported her appearances, often giving her subject, and sometimes a title, but rarely more than a brief synopsis. Of course, Abigail often spent more than one day in a town and spoke more than once, giving a woman’s rights talk but also trying to attract an audience with other topics of interest.">2 This address (and “The Powers of Thought,” which follows chronologically) is noteworthy, not merely for this reason but also because it provides a window onto Abigail’s religious inclinations, particularly her interest in Spiritualism. Scott Duniway was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church. Her grandfather Roelofson had been an important figure in the spiritual awakening of Presbyterians in the Cumberland region of Kentucky at the turn of the nineteenth century and her uncle, Reverend Neill Johnson, had been among the first of the denomination’s preachers to reach Oregon.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_3_98" id="identifier_3_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="On Cumberland Presbyterianism, see also About Scott Duniway n. 92; Corning 67; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; New Northwest 11 June 1875, 12 Jan. 1877, 12 May 1876, qtd. in Moynihan, Rebel 4-5; New Northwest 12 Dec. 1878, 10 Mar. 1881, qtd. in Bandow 66-67. The first Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Oregon was the Reverend Josephus Adamson Cornwall, who came by ox-train from Georgia in 1846. Then: “Two strong preachers of this denomination, Joseph Robertson and Neill Johnson, arrived in 1851. Johnson was a native of North Carolina and the record of his ministry is a long and happy one. He named the thriving community of Belpassi on the edge of French Prairie, where he settled and was pastor of the Cumberland Church, which after became the Presbyterian Church of Woodburn.” Like so many groups, the Cumberland Presbytery was rent by the Civil War. Indeed, in 1861, Cornwall, who was pro-slavery, filed charges against Johnson, who–like his in-laws–opposed the South’s “peculiar institution,” alleging that Johnson was “playing politics rather than preaching religion” and had “‘slandered the southern church’.” After a hearing, the presbytery exonerated Johnson, and Cornwall soon removed to California (Clark 658-61). Johnson’s wife, Esther (Roelofson), was Abigail’s mother’s sister. The Johnsons migrated to Oregon from Iowa. When the Scotts arrived the following year (1852), they stayed initially with the Johnsons.">3 But Abigail drifted from traditional religiosity, putting her faith–as in all things–in the progressive advance of reason and common sense. Rejecting Calvinist doctrines of damnation and salvation, she later admitted that frontier preaching often had brought her to “the ragged edge of despair,” while camp meetings left her “religiously dead,” so that she became “if not skeptical, decidedly unorthodox.” She predicted that “rationalism in religion” would replace “the dry husks of a decayed theology” and, in 1881, declared that “the day of blind belief in simple or complex dogmas is almost dead.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_4_98" id="identifier_4_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Given that such “dogmas” were important factors in restricting “woman’s sphere,” it is not surprising that Abigail–and others, most famously Elizabeth Cady Stanton–came to question some forms of received Christianity (New Northwest 16 July 1875; Kraditor 13-14, 64-81; Jenny Weatherup, “‘Feminized’ Religion and Women’s Rights“).">4 Insofar as she was attracted to any church at all, it was to Unitarianism, whose humanist and universalist leanings comported better with her own.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_5_98" id="identifier_5_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail wrote that Unitarian services “are nearer to my style of thought than others” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 20 Nov. 1892, qtd. in Ward, “Women’s Responses” 96). The anti-Trinitarian strain in Congregationalism developed around 1818-1825 (Latourette 1043). It is “more than a coincidence” that Unitarianism was chiefly of humanist origin, because humanism emphasized “the competence of human reason,” an approach that “could easily exalt the competence of the intellect, stress the human side of Christ, regard Jesus as simply the best of men, emphasize the ethical aspects of the Biblical teachings, and believe that man is able to attain to them with the aid of God but without the basic new birth of which the New Testament speaks” (Latourette 795). Such a religion was congenial to social reformers, like Scott Duniway, who advocated equal suffrage (or temperance, or abolition, or prison reform, etc.) because they believed that “the world could be purposefully altered by specific rational decisions; that rationality was necessary to direct progress; and that progress was possible in a moral, as well as physical sense” (L. Roberts 88-89). Another attractive feature of Unitarianism was its universalism, or anti-denominationalism. In a very favorable report on the People’s Institute of Chicago, founded by Bishop Samuel Fallows of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Scott Duniway heralds “the day of universal church union, in which there is to be no sectarianism whatever” (Pacific Empire 14 Nov. 1895).">5 She also respected the Reverend T. L. Eliot, of the First Unitarian Church of Portland, who conducted the funeral services for her daughter, Clara, in 1886.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_6_98" id="identifier_6_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841-?): born St. Louis; graduated Washington University, 1862; divinity degree, Harvard; one year as minister, Church of the Messiah, St. Louis; came to Portland, 1867; two terms as Multnomah County school superintendent, 1870s; pastor, First Unitarian until 1891, then pastor emeritus (Who’s Who in Oregon 76-77; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 275-76). On the services for Clara, see New Northwest 28 Jan. 1886. Eliot also would conduct the service for Abigail in 1915.">6 Nonetheless, she remained spiritually restless.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_7_98" id="identifier_7_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1893, she wrote to her son, “I have not been to church since I last wrote. Really, there is nothing in it for one who has sounded all its shallow depths in childhood and found nothing–nothing–a worse than nothing and vanity. And yet there must be something somewhere. Oh that I might find it” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 31 Jan. 1893, qtd. in Ward, “Women’s Responses” 96). Montague goes so far as to call her a “pronounced agnostic” and suggests that part of the mutual antipathy between her and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union concerned not prohibition but religion (74).">7 This restlessness aroused in her both curiosity and skepticism about things occult and, particularly, about what lay beyond the grave. As this speech reveals, Scott Duniway was intrigued by the possibility of “psychic laws” comparable to other natural laws. The existence of such laws remained to be proven conclusively. However, Abigail remained amenable to reasoned investigation.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_8_98" id="identifier_8_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The New Northwest carried a story exposing the “Spiritualistic tomfoolery” of the seances in Philadelphia conducted by alleged psychic Katie King (29 Jan. 1875). On the other hand, in 1879, counting herself among the “many thinkers . . . who not only desire to believe in a future life, but wish, if possible, that its reality may be proven,” Abigail described a visit to Dr. Slade, of Portland. The doctor placed a pencil between two slates, which produced a spirit message from Abigail’s deceased sister, Margaret Ann Scott Fearnside. Wrote Abigail: “We have seen equally clever and incomprehensible feats by magicians often. We do not know that Dr. Slade is not one of these, nor do we know that he is. But we do know that he could not have been aware that we had once had a Sister Maggie; nor could that writing have been done without the aid of intelligent power” (New Northwest 18 Sept. 1879). A year later, she wrote that the existence of mediums who possess a “psychic force” that enables the dead to communicate with the living “is a fact that any person may demonstrate. The writer testifies to that which she has seen when she makes this declaration” (New Northwest 30 Sept. 1880).">8 Indeed, her attitude was buttressed by deeply personal experience, for Abigail claimed to have received communications from the deceased Clara.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-visit-of-nicodemus-to-jesus-by-night%e2%80%9d-unknown/#footnote_9_98" id="identifier_9_98" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Nancy Wilson Ross quotes Scott Duniway: “She passed away in January 1886, but I heard from her through private psychic sources within a month, and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (144). Reputed spirit messages from Clara, circa February, 1886, reside in Box 8, folder 4, of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers.">9 Sometimes she was invited to speak at Spiritualist gatherings10, as in the following. The text is taken from an undated, unattributed clipping,“Death, the Second Birth,” in Scrapbook #1, page 21, of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. “Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway addressed the society of Bible Spiritualists at its hall on Second street last evening, by special invitation. She said in part:” I have chosen as my theme “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night.” I wish first to say that I appear before you as an advocate of no ism. I should feel drawn to these meetings much more strongly than can now be possible, if, instead of adopting the name of Spiritualism, which has come to stand for so much in the public mind which you cannot indorse [sic], you would call yourselves by some such name as “Students of Psychic Law.” However, the name of your society is not a matter for me to decide; and I trust you will pardon the suggestion, whether you consider it or not. Now to my subject: If you will turn to the third chapter of John, you will find that there was a man named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; and the same came to Jesus by night. Did you ever notice that the average “man of the Pharisees,” of whom Nicodemus is one, is so deeply incrusted within the shell of some organized ism that when his mind begins to expand in the birth throes of desire for more light along psychic or spiritual lines, his first impulse is to seek it in secret, or, as Nicodemus did, “by night?” The most wonderful part of the wonderful career of Jesus of Nazareth was the simplicity and naturalness of his teachings. He broke the unnatural laws of the Jewish Sabbath without fear of consequences, and wrought what the world in its ignorance called miracles as naturally as he wo[u]ld sit at meat with his followers. He lived the “simple life” to the uttermost, and both by precept and example enlightened the dormant understanding of all who were willing to study the divine revelations of Nature. Nicodemus, being stirred by his teachings, but unable to comprehend them, said unto him: “Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these things that thou dost unless God be with him.” Jesus answered and said unto him: “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Remember, always, that Jesus lived close to the heart of Nature. He recognized the kinship of every sentient thing with the eternal mind, of which we are all a part. But Nicodemus, failing to comprehend the supreme naturalness of this simple fact, said: “How can a man be born when he is old?” And Jesus answered, calling his attention to a natural law that permeates all physical life, by saying: “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ And Nicodemus said: ‘How can these things be?” Every physician knows, and every man, woman and child ought to know, that all embryo life, from the atom to the man, exists in water, and is born in water. This is the natural birth. The tiniest seed cannot escape the environment of this natural law, nor can man escape it. But Nicodemus, though a master in Israel, failed to comprehend the primal, universal law, by which the great Teacher was attempting to lead him up to a knowledge of the ultimate birth of the spirit of man, which would only occur after he became a living soul. And Jesus added, in his effort to make his meaning clearer: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the spirit is spirit.” Still Nicodemus did not understand, and Jesus, being amazed at his ignorance, said: “Art thou a master in Israel and understandeth not these things?” Again he said “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the spirit.” And yet, we are gravely taught that the new birth is a mysterious, experimental change within these physical bodies, in the face of the spiritual significance of a fundamental, universal fact, so beautifully explained by the great teacher that every child can be made to understand it. Scientific research is slowly, but surely, leading men to understand the true significance of the new birth. The new, or second birth is simply the birth of the spirit, through the chemical change we call death, which releases the soul from the body and permits it to return to God, who gave it. The change we call death is as necessary to our spiritual unfoldment as is our first, or physical birth from the water in which we existed before we were born. The secret of happiness hereafter lies wholly in our efforts to do right in the body. We must all sow as we reap. There is no escape from this law. It is as unerring as it is universal. The law of retribution is as universal as the law of evolution. I know not how many aeons man existed as an animal before the eternal mystery of life, that we call God, breathed into him the breath of the spirit, so he might become a living soul. But let man become convinced without the possibility of a doubt that he must reap as a spirit what he has sown in the flesh, whether it be of good or evil, and the inexorable law of self-preservation will lead him in the ways of righteousness. NOTES Edward Dickinson Baker (1811-1861): statesman, soldier, and orator; born London; emigrated to Philadelphia, 1816; entered law practice, Carrolton, Illinois, 1828; major during Black Hawk War, 1832; Lincoln’s closest friend, and law partner, 1837; Whig; Illinois legislature, 1837-45; U.S. Representative, 1845, 1849-51; distinguished himself in Mexican War, 1846; supervised construction of Panama railroad, 1851; moved to San Francisco, 1852, and gained high reputation as criminal lawyer and orator; by invitation, moved to Oregon, 1859, where, one year later, and despite Democratic opposition, the first state senate elected him Oregon’s first Republican Senator; “the foremost man in debate in that illustrious body”; colonel of a regiment of volunteers, killed in battle of Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, first northern officer to die in Civil War; “Excepting our own Webster, no man of modern times has been so successful as Baker in the forum, in the Senate, and before popular assemblies” (Corning 17; Shuck 63-83). Baker was a Scott family benefactor. In 1846 he extended credit to Tucker Scott, Abigail’s father, to buy the first circular sawmill west of Ohio, and three years later made the latter his exclusive agent for selling Page’s Portable Saw Mills throughout Illinois and Indiana, thereby substantially improving the family’s fortunes (Moynihan, Rebel 24). Local newspapers commonly reported her appearances, often giving her subject, and sometimes a title, but rarely more than a brief synopsis. Of course, Abigail often spent more than one day in a town and spoke more than once, giving a woman’s rights talk but also trying to attract an audience with other topics of interest. On Cumberland Presbyterianism, see also About Scott Duniway n. 92; Corning 67; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; New Northwest 11 June 1875, 12 Jan. 1877, 12 May 1876, qtd. in Moynihan, Rebel 4-5; New Northwest 12 Dec. 1878, 10 Mar. 1881, qtd. in Bandow 66-67. The first Cumberland Presbyterian minister in Oregon was the Reverend Josephus Adamson Cornwall, who came by ox-train from Georgia in 1846. Then: “Two strong preachers of this denomination, Joseph Robertson and Neill Johnson, arrived in 1851. Johnson was a native of North Carolina and the record of his ministry is a long and happy one. He named the thriving community of Belpassi on the edge of French Prairie, where he settled and was pastor of the Cumberland Church, which after became the Presbyterian Church of Woodburn.” Like so many groups, the Cumberland Presbytery was rent by the Civil War. Indeed, in 1861, Cornwall, who was pro-slavery, filed charges against Johnson, who–like his in-laws–opposed the South’s “peculiar institution,” alleging that Johnson was “playing politics rather than preaching religion” and had “‘slandered the southern church’.” After a hearing, the presbytery exonerated Johnson, and Cornwall soon removed to California (Clark 658-61). Johnson’s wife, Esther (Roelofson), was Abigail’s mother’s sister. The Johnsons migrated to Oregon from Iowa. When the Scotts arrived the following year (1852), they stayed initially with the Johnsons. Given that such “dogmas” were important factors in restricting “woman’s sphere,” it is not surprising that Abigail–and others, most famously Elizabeth Cady Stanton–came to question some forms of received Christianity (New Northwest 16 July 1875; Kraditor 13-14, 64-81; Jenny Weatherup, “‘Feminized’ Religion and Women’s Rights“). Abigail wrote that Unitarian services “are nearer to my style of thought than others” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 20 Nov. 1892, qtd. in Ward, “Women’s Responses” 96). The anti-Trinitarian strain in Congregationalism developed around 1818-1825 (Latourette 1043). It is “more than a coincidence” that Unitarianism was chiefly of humanist origin, because humanism emphasized “the competence of human reason,” an approach that “could easily exalt the competence of the intellect, stress the human side of Christ, regard Jesus as simply the best of men, emphasize the ethical aspects of the Biblical teachings, and believe that man is able to attain to them with the aid of God but without the basic new birth of which the New Testament speaks” (Latourette 795). Such a religion was congenial to social reformers, like Scott Duniway, who advocated equal suffrage (or temperance, or abolition, or prison reform, etc.) because they believed that “the world could be purposefully altered by specific rational decisions; that rationality was necessary to direct progress; and that progress was possible in a moral, as well as physical sense” (L. Roberts 88-89). Another attractive feature of Unitarianism was its universalism, or anti-denominationalism. In a very favorable report on the People’s Institute of Chicago, founded by Bishop Samuel Fallows of the Reformed Episcopal Church, Scott Duniway heralds “the day of universal church union, in which there is to be no sectarianism whatever” (Pacific Empire 14 Nov. 1895). Thomas Lamb Eliot (1841-?): born St. Louis; graduated Washington University, 1862; divinity degree, Harvard; one year as minister, Church of the Messiah, St. Louis; came to Portland, 1867; two terms as Multnomah County school superintendent, 1870s; pastor, First Unitarian until 1891, then pastor emeritus (Who’s Who in Oregon 76-77; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 275-76). On the services for Clara, see New Northwest 28 Jan. 1886. Eliot also would conduct the service for Abigail in 1915. In 1893, she wrote to her son, “I have not been to church since I last wrote. Really, there is nothing in it for one who has sounded all its shallow depths in childhood and found nothing–nothing–a worse than nothing and vanity. And yet there must be something somewhere. Oh that I might find it” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 31 Jan. 1893, qtd. in Ward, “Women’s Responses” 96). Montague goes so far as to call her a “pronounced agnostic” and suggests that part of the mutual antipathy between her and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union concerned not prohibition but religion (74). The New Northwest carried a story exposing the “Spiritualistic tomfoolery” of the seances in Philadelphia conducted by alleged psychic Katie King (29 Jan. 1875). On the other hand, in 1879, counting herself among the “many thinkers . . . who not only desire to believe in a future life, but wish, if possible, that its reality may be proven,” Abigail described a visit to Dr. Slade, of Portland. The doctor placed a pencil between two slates, which produced a spirit message from Abigail’s deceased sister, Margaret Ann Scott Fearnside. Wrote Abigail: “We have seen equally clever and incomprehensible feats by magicians often. We do not know that Dr. Slade is not one of these, nor do we know that he is. But we do know that he could not have been aware that we had once had a Sister Maggie; nor could that writing have been done without the aid of intelligent power” (New Northwest 18 Sept. 1879). A year later, she wrote that the existence of mediums who possess a “psychic force” that enables the dead to communicate with the living “is a fact that any person may demonstrate. The writer testifies to that which she has seen when she makes this declaration” (New Northwest 30 Sept. 1880). Nancy Wilson Ross quotes Scott Duniway: “She passed away in January 1886, but I heard from her through private psychic sources within a month, and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (144). Reputed spirit messages from Clara, circa February, 1886, reside in Box 8, folder 4, of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. She would lecture at a camp meeting of the Clackamas and Multnomah County spiritualist societies on Sunday, August 2, 1908 (Oregon City Courier 24 July 1908).
Scott Duniway spoke this Wednesday afternoon at the quarterly meeting of the Oregon State Nurses’ Association, on the grounds of the North Pacific Sanatorium.1 This address, one of the few that are not explicitly or primarily political in content, combines two subjects of recurring interest to her: the exploits of the pioneers and women’s superiority […]
Scott Duniway spoke this Wednesday afternoon at the quarterly meeting of the Oregon State Nurses’ Association, on the grounds of the North Pacific Sanatorium.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cearly-pioneer-nursing%e2%80%9d-july-10-1907/#footnote_1_96" id="identifier_1_96" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Prior to 1890, there were no nursing schools in Oregon, and only a few trained nurses who had migrated from the east; when the first school, affiliated with Good Samaritan Hospital, opened that year, Portland had seventy thousand inhabitants and three trained nurses. At the time of Abigail’s speech, five or six schools were operating in the state. Although the Portland Visiting Nurse Association had been formed two years earlier, the first statewide organization was founded in 1904 when forty-five nurses met at Good Samaritan to establish the Oregon State Association for Trained Nurses. Its objectives were: to raise and maintain a fund for the benefit of sick nurses; to advance the profession of nursing; to aid the sick poor; and to develop a loyal and sympathetic feeling among nurses. The president of the Association when Abigail spoke was Linna (Linnie) G. Richardson, who later would become Mrs. Linnie Laird (American Journal of Nursing). In the early days, most were independent, private duty nurses; they provided care in the home, especially for tuberculosis and typhoid victims, in unsanitary conditions, with family members exposed to the disease, because there were very few hospital beds for the city’s poor. And the “professionalization” of nursing to which Scott Duniway refers was still in its early stages: Legislation requiring that nurses be licensed and registered, for example, would not be adopted until 1911 (Boufford).">1 This address, one of the few that are not explicitly or primarily political in content, combines two subjects of recurring interest to her: the exploits of the pioneers and women’s superiority to men in matters of health and sanitation. Indirectly, this discussion of the professionalization of nursing also corroborates her frequent assertions of evolutionary progress and that the women of Oregon by their works have earned equal rights. The text is taken from the Oregonian of July 11, 1907. In the early days of my frequent maternal experiences on an Oregon ranch, the idea, or even necessity of a professional nurse was not thought of. The prospective mother, feeling that her hour of tribulation was nigh, hastily gathered together all the soiled clothing belonging to the household and hired men, and between pauses of pain and suffering, put out on the clotheslines a family washing of sufficient magnitude to supply the needs of those dependent upon her exertions during her periodical confinements. The “hired girl” (a raw recruit, in her teens), from a neighboring farmhouse, was installed at such a time in kitchen, dairy and nursery, and, as soon as the mother could resume her duties, the girl was in demand in some other household for a like purpose, leaving the convalescing mother, so to overtax her strength as to bring into her depleted body many of the ills that now, thanks to the Oregon Nurses’ State Association, rarely follow the advent of the stork. Nor is the modern nurse alone in demand for maternity cases. She has become a professional; and that men are often rescued by her services from the jaws of death, many a physician cheerfully bears witness. It is a great pleasure to a veteran in the service of woman’s progress to note the advancement of the sex in this most important realm of human endeavor. The fact that women, in all the handicrafts of life, are organizing in professional associations, thus elevating every kind of womanly effort into the ranks of art, is gratifying evidence of the growth of the woman movement along the lines of highest endeavor. We are indebted for much of this progress, or rather the popularity accompanying it, to the example set for us long ago by professional men. Time was when a professional cook or laundryman was unknown. This necessary work was all performed by women, whose maternal duties–a profession itself, if women had only known it–so handicapped their unskilled efforts that scientific cookery, laundry work and nursing were alike unheard of. But when women began to make these duties professional, and thereby elevated them into the arts, we began to have trained chefs in the household, trained nurses in the sickroom and trained laundry women here and there. Lessons in sanitation naturally accompanied these professional efforts, and the former village doctor, noted chiefly for his skill in the use of phlebotomy and cantharides 2, has given way to the trained city physician, who could cut your head off to mend it, if necessary, relying fully upon the skill of the trained nurse to finish, or rather to assist nature in finishing the work for which he is responsible. The advent of women into the ranks of a profession peculiarly their own, like this important one that now concerns us under these umbrageous shades, brings us to a complete contrast with the early days of which I have spoken, before trained nurses were to be had for love or money and no beautiful surroundings afforded the tired maid-of-all-work a moment of healthful recreation. Therefore, ladies, you need not wonder that I greet you, assembled as you are to combine business with recreation, with feelings of joy. I am glad to see you taking interest in your association. The more ardent your interest in your organization the more heartily will you rejoice in your duties. It has ever been the duty of woman to assuage human suffering, and the better prepared she is for her profession the better can she conserve the life forces of the sick, and if need be, comfort the dying. The better class of physicians everywhere are glad to welcome the ministrations of the trained nurse. That you have advanced to the dignity of a complete profession among yourselves is here attested by the splendor of your present surroundings, the co-operation of the honored head of this honored institution3, and the health and joy you bring to homes where your presence is hailed in times of distress as that of ministering angels. As I contrast the present conditions accompanying the trials of motherhood with those of my own early years, and look back along the decades to the differences between the then and the now, I am reminded of the explorer along the icebound shores of the Yukon, who, unable to note the progress of the glacier that breaks its output, and with thundering roar escapes into the surging waters of the Pacific seas, discovers that even while he slept, the icy river was all the time making progress. So, I, in looking back over the departed years can note the progress of women, since the days in the long ago when ridicule, misrepresentation and rotten eggs were my portion instead of the roses and acclaim that greet me now. I feel all the time the current has been moving, even when I saw it not, except when measured by its grand results. I ask and expect your co-operation, my daughters, as I love to call you, in launching the equal suffrage campaign that is now upon us.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cearly-pioneer-nursing%e2%80%9d-july-10-1907/#footnote_4_96" id="identifier_4_96" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Following the 1906 debacle, Scott Duniway, who was busy blaming N.A.W.S.A. for defeat and exchanging caustic correspondence with its leaders, requested $2,000–with no strings attached–from the National to fund a new petition campaign. As it would for six years (having resolved to leave Oregon “severely alone”), the National refused. After the legislature rejected a joint resolution for a suffrage amendment, Abigail took out a personal loan for $500, Laura Clay, Henry Browne Blackwell, and Alice Stone Blackwell sent personal contributions, and petitions were obtained to put a new initiative on the ballot in 1908. Abigail was particularly moved by Clay’s generosity and subsequently would tell the Kentuckian that Oregon favored her to replace Shaw as N.A.W.S.A. president (Fuller 99-101; Moynihan, Rebel 212-13; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 544).">4 Every step we take in the line of progress brings us nearer to the goal of liberty. NOTES Prior to 1890, there were no nursing schools in Oregon, and only a few trained nurses who had migrated from the east; when the first school, affiliated with Good Samaritan Hospital, opened that year, Portland had seventy thousand inhabitants and three trained nurses. At the time of Abigail’s speech, five or six schools were operating in the state. Although the Portland Visiting Nurse Association had been formed two years earlier, the first statewide organization was founded in 1904 when forty-five nurses met at Good Samaritan to establish the Oregon State Association for Trained Nurses. Its objectives were: to raise and maintain a fund for the benefit of sick nurses; to advance the profession of nursing; to aid the sick poor; and to develop a loyal and sympathetic feeling among nurses. The president of the Association when Abigail spoke was Linna (Linnie) G. Richardson, who later would become Mrs. Linnie Laird (American Journal of Nursing). In the early days, most were independent, private duty nurses; they provided care in the home, especially for tuberculosis and typhoid victims, in unsanitary conditions, with family members exposed to the disease, because there were very few hospital beds for the city’s poor. And the “professionalization” of nursing to which Scott Duniway refers was still in its early stages: Legislation requiring that nurses be licensed and registered, for example, would not be adopted until 1911 (Boufford). Bloodletting and Spanish fly, respectively. Probably Robert C. Coffey, M.D., who was a surgeon and Medical Director (Annals of Surgery). Following the 1906 debacle, Scott Duniway, who was busy blaming N.A.W.S.A. for defeat and exchanging caustic correspondence with its leaders, requested $2,000–with no strings attached–from the National to fund a new petition campaign. As it would for six years (having resolved to leave Oregon “severely alone”), the National refused. After the legislature rejected a joint resolution for a suffrage amendment, Abigail took out a personal loan for $500, Laura Clay, Henry Browne Blackwell, and Alice Stone Blackwell sent personal contributions, and petitions were obtained to put a new initiative on the ballot in 1908. Abigail was particularly moved by Clay’s generosity and subsequently would tell the Kentuckian that Oregon favored her to replace Shaw as N.A.W.S.A. president (Fuller 99-101; Moynihan, Rebel 212-13; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 544).
OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 17, 1906
If 1900 and its aftermath had been a test of Scott Duniway’s “still hunt” tactics, then 1906 became equally a test of the vigorous public campaign methods (the so-called “hurrah” tactics) and the suffrage-temperance alliance espoused by others. When the referendum failed (disastrously, with a larger “nay” vote than six years before), Scott Duniway interpreted […]
If 1900 and its aftermath had been a test of Scott Duniway’s “still hunt” tactics, then 1906 became equally a test of the vigorous public campaign methods (the so-called “hurrah” tactics) and the suffrage-temperance alliance espoused by others. When the referendum failed (disastrously, with a larger “nay” vote than six years before), Scott Duniway interpreted defeat as final repudiation of the National’s methods and planned a comeback. Some, of course, blamed Abigail herself. Ada Wallace Unruh<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_1_94" id="identifier_1_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="She was organizing mass temperance meetings in the state as early as 1893; organized four unions in Crook County the following year, including one on the Warms Springs reservation; state W.C.T.U. corresponding secretary, 1907, president, c. 1909-12 (Crawford 5-9). On the W.C.T.U.’s efforts in the Pacific Northwest more generally, see Soden.">1, a national W.C.T.U. organizer, called her “the great obstacle to equal suffrage in the state” who “offends the moral and Christian element in the movement.” So when the association convened five months later at the home of Lucy A. Rose Mallory<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_2_94" id="identifier_2_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1846-1920): daughter of Aaron Rose and Minerva Kelley (or Kellogg); mother died at Lucy’s birth; father remarried fifteen months later and family emigrated to Oregon from Michigan, 1851, settling on donation claim that became Roseburg, named after family; married Rufus Mallory (1831-1914), prominent attorney and politician, who arrived in Jacksonville from Iowa, 1859, on June 24, 1860, when 14, in Roseburg, where he had taught school for fifteen months and she had been his pupil; he was state attorney, 1860, 1862-66, in state legislature, 1862, U.S. Congress, 1867-69, Speaker of Oregon House, 1872, U.S. District Attorney for Oregon, 1874-82, twice delegate to Republican National Convention, 1868, 1888, twice president of Republican state conventions; she founded, edited, and published (for more than thirty years) “Companion-Papers,” World’s Advance Thought and Universal Republic, advocating universal equality of the sexes, vegetarianism, universal language and money, universal peace, cooperation and love; firm believer in spiritualism, gave psychic readings in rear of Mallory Hotel, where she also published her magazine; moved to San Jose, California, following 1917 death of only son, Elmer E. Mallory; died in San Jose in September (Corning 156; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 541-42; Hines 273-74; Gaston, Portland 2: 5-7; Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 98; Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days,” Oregon Journal 12 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 142-45; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919, 4 Sept. 1920; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 4: 45).">2, a group of dissidents intent on different leadership put forth its own slate of candidates, with Wallace Unruh as its nominee for President. A donnybrook ensued. Abigail denounced the rival slate as “a piece of political chicanery” and ultimately prevailed, 41-28. Undeterred, the dissidents nominated Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_3_94" id="identifier_3_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”).">3 as vice-president, prompting Abigail to declare: “. . . I positively cannot work with Mrs. Colby . . . she has never succeeded in any cause she has championed and she insists in placing serious objections in the way of everything I plan to do . . .”4 When Wallace Unruh retorted that no one in the room had succeeded in the cause, Abigail “bounded to her feet with the agility of a girl” and declared, “I have–in territorial Washington.” This was too much for Maria Louise Trenholm Hidden<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_5_94" id="identifier_5_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Prominent clubwoman (joined Portland Woman’s Club while living in Vancouver, Washington, 1897; also Women’s State Press Club and Coterie); first president, equal suffrage association in Vermont; school board, Vancouver, Washington; temperance advocate (Band of Hope, Daughter of Temperance, Good Templar, and W.C.T.U.); Oregon representative to A.W.S.A. convention, Philadelphia, 1912; Progressive candidate for Portland councilman-at-large and city commissioner, 1913, and state representative from Multnomah County, favoring semi-annual tax payments and abolition of delinquent penalty, consolidation of state boards and commissions, national woman suffrage, state and national Prohibition, longer terms of office, “laws preparing for the influx of immigrants via Panama Canal,” school elections under general election law, universal eight-hour day except on farms, 1914; wife of Jackson Hidden (Scrapbook #50: 100, OR Hist. Soc.; “Second Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1897-8,” Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.).">5, who denounced the proceedings as an “outrage” and sneered, “You succeed? Why, Washington repudiates you–they repudiate you, I say.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_6_94" id="identifier_6_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This quarrel had deep roots. Eight years before, Scott Duniway and Trenholm Hidden had fought essentially the same battle in the pages of the Pacific Empire. On January 6, 1898, Abigail blamed the Washington reversal on prohibitionists, provoking an outraged response from Trenholm Hidden, who defended “Christianized methods” for a “moral and spiritual” movement (17 Mar. 1898). Abigail retorted the following week (24 Mar. 1898) and, the week after that (31 Mar. 1898), Trenholm Hidden had what clearly was not the final word.">6 For this Trenholm Hidden was roundly hissed. A brief peace was restored when Elizabeth Laughlin Lord<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_7_94" id="identifier_7_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1841-1913): “with the possible exception of” Scott Duniway herself, “the best known of the pioneer women of Oregon”; born Missouri; daughter of William Catesby and Mary Jane Yeargain Laughlin, 1850 pioneers in The Dalles; on New Year’s Day, 1861, married Wintworth Lord (1832-1917), merchant, cattle- and sheep-man, and miller, who came to The Dalles from California, 1858; one of first proponents of suffrage in Oregon; vice-president, O.S.E.S.A., at death and “one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s most valuable aides”; president, Women’s Political Study club, a local suffrage society; First Reader, Christian Science Church of The Dalles; member, Sorosis; “a lady of marked literary taste and ability, and the author of a number of interesting articles and books,” including Reminiscences of Eastern Oregon, her diary of family’s overland journey and early years, 1903; “a woman of charming personality and of exceptionally brilliant mind even until the day of her death”; among fifty most outstanding people in history of Wasco County; died in August of heart trouble; two children, one who survived (McNeal 52, 65; Illustrated History of Central Oregon 278; Sunday Oregonian 4 Mar. 1917; Sarah Evans, “Women’s Clubs, Women’s Work,” Oregon Sunday Journal 20 Nov. 1904; Scrapbook #44: 87, #50: 86, OR Hist. Soc.; “Mrs. Lord is Called Suddenly,” Vertical File, “Biography-‘Lo’”, OR Hist. Soc.). In Path Breaking, Abigail describes her as “a pioneer of the early ‘40s” (216).">7 of The Dalles was nominated and elected unanimously. But uproar reignited when Abigail opposed Dr. Mary Anna Cooke Thompson’s<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_8_94" id="identifier_8_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1825-1919): physician whose practice focused on women’s medicine, particularly childbirth; born New York City; married Reuben Thompson (?-1885), LaSalle, Illinois, 1847; studied medicine with Drs. Bry and Larkin in LaSalle in time before most medical schools accepted women; said to have been first woman practitioner in Illinois and Iowa; Portland’s first woman physician, 1867, where she practiced for twenty years; provided for six children and (like Scott Duniway) incapacitated husband; charter member, O.S.W.S.A., and prohibitionist who believed in women’s natural moral superiority, sparring constantly with Scott Duniway over movement goals; “one of the most influential women” in Portland history (Corning 243; Larsell 414; Moynihan, Rebel 147, 149, 187; Woman’s Tribune 29 Feb. 1908).">8 nomination for auditor, declaring their inability to work together. In the end, Dr. Thompson and all of the rival candidates, save one9, were defeated, prompting Trenholm Hidden to suggest sarcastically that elections henceforth be dispensed with in favor of letting “the president choose whom she pleases.” Wallace Unruh denounced “one woman power” and alleged vote-packing by a large contingent of “new members” all named Duniway, insisted that Abigail was backed by only 6 of the 355 local suffrage committees in the state, warned that the National would withdraw its support, and allowed that formation of another state association had been discussed.10 Thus, Scott Duniway’s position as incoming President of O.S.E.S.A. was extraordinarily delicate. She needed to unify and re-energize demoralized and bitterly divided suffrage forces; recrimination could only be self-defeating. On the other hand, she needed to set a direction for future efforts, which, under the circumstances, could not avoid assessing some blame for the recent defeat and pouring gasoline on the fire. Further complicating the situation was her strong tendency to say, “I told you so.” What follows is Scott Duniway’s attempt to strike an appropriate balance among these competing motives, less than three weeks after the election brouhaha. It is difficult to assess her sincerity in eschewing factionalism; certainly it can be seen with some justice as the magnanimity of the victor. Even contemporaneous news reports seemed of two minds. Under headlines such as “Suffragists Love Feast” and “New President of State Organization Slyly Twits National Leaders Over Last Campaign,” the Weekly Oregonian reported: The dove of peace hovered affectionately over the heads of the Woman Suffragists Saturday when their first meeting under the Duniway regime was held. The W.C.T.U. faction was most conspicuous by its absence, but no one seemed to be offended at that fact. The dogs of war were securely chained, an olive branch was in each faithful hand, and a love feast was presided over by the new officers. Not so much as a reference to the unpleasant episodes of election day was made11, and as for Mrs. Hidden’s name, no one even breathed it. Mrs. Clara Colby was among the first to arrive, but with her usual finesse and tact she joined in the spirit of the meeting and became as deeply interested in plans for future work as anyone present. Mrs. Duniway’s address, as president, was the only important number on the program, business of a routine nature only being transacted and a committee appointed to frame and submit a new constitution. Mrs. Duniway caused much amusement by her reference to the shipwreck of suffrage, which had been left in Oregon by the National leaders who came out here last year to show Oregon women how to do things. Her references to the Indians, Chinese and negroes being pulled in by the hair of their heads, also caused much mirth. The text is taken from the Weekly Oregonian of November 22, 1906. To the officers and members of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, Greeting: In resuming once more the office of chief executive of this intelligent and patriotic body of disenfranchised tax-paying citizens, after having many times in its history voluntarily relinquished its responsibilities to beloved and capable presiding officers, with each and all of whom I have worked at all times in perfect harmony, I am yielding again to the solicitations of a worthy and capable presiding officer, Mrs. Henry Waldo Coe<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_12_94" id="identifier_12_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting), O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608). Insisting upon “my right to name my successor,” Abigail hand-picked Boley Coe for the Presidency when she resigned the office in 1905 to protest the National’s interference (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 225).">12, to whose unswerving devotion to the cause of Liberty we are all ready to bear testimony. In reverting for a moment to the stirring events of the past fortnight, which need not be recapitulated here, I recall the first strenuous years of my itinerant devotion to the fundamental principles of Liberty and Justice for all the people, during which gloomy period I was compelled to stand practically alone, as one described by the poet Richard Realf<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_13_94" id="identifier_13_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1834-1878): born Sussex, England; began writing verse at 15; published first collection, Guesses at the Beautiful, 1852; emigrated to U.S., 1854; accompanied free-state emigrants to Kansas, 1856, becoming associate of John Brown; served in 88th Illinois regiment during Civil War, writing some of his best lyrics; established school for freedmen in South Carolina, 1868; removed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1870, becoming journalist and lecturer; “a brilliant talker and a fine orator”; unhappy matrimony drove him to suicide (“Richard Realf“).">13: Who did not wait till freedom had become The easy shibboleth of the courtier’s lips, But smote for her when God himself seemed dumb, And all arching skies were in eclipse.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_14_94" id="identifier_14_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The passage emends a portion of “Written on the Night of His Suicide”: Nor did he wait till Freedom had become The popular shibboleth of courtier’s lips; He smote for her when God himself seemed dumb And all His arching skies were in eclipse. (Realf 34) Three months earlier, in a commentary on the electoral defeat, the Oregonian had reiterated its opposition to woman suffrage but credited Abigail with instigating and carrying on the fight “unceasingly” for forty years: “whatever progress it has made has been due to her, more than to all other agencies together. But for her, indeed, the subject would scarcely have been mentioned in Oregon to this day, and little considered. The progress it has made is an extraordinary tribute to one woman’s energy.” Then the paper quoted these same lines from Realf and concluded: “If woman suffrage is a synonym of freedom, as its advocates claim, these lines are fit eulogy of Abigail Scott Duniway” (20 Aug. 1906, qtd. in Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 205.">14 That these continued efforts, reinforced by slowly increasing numbers of noble men and women, through nearly four decades of eventful years, have at last borne such abundant fruit that a multitude of new aspirants for place and power are eager to undertake its management, has recently been abundantly attested. At the close of the late equal suffrage campaign, during which many of our time-honored voting constituents temporarily stepped aside to watch the brilliant pyrotechnical management of our distinguished National standard-bearers, we found ourselves in the condition of the survivors of a shipwreck, a conflagration, a sirocco or a flood. Our treasury was empty, and our work of reconstruction has ever since been much handicapped by the necessity of removing the debris of a struggle which ought to have been successful. Our faith in the final triumph of the elemental principle of equal rights for all the people is so strong, our belief in the fundamental basis of self-government is so clear, our devotion to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States is so unyielding, and our confidence in the growing enlightenment of the average voter is so hopeful, that no disaster can dismay us. To you, my beloved co-workers of the old guard, and also of the new, I am looking for co-operation in renewed confidence, expectancy and hope. I come to you as the president of no party; the adherent of no faction; but as the humble servant of the cause, trying to secure equal rights for the mothers of the race, in whose interest, through so many of the earlier years of my strenuous womanhood, I consecrated my life, my earnings, and my sacred honor15; and I now lovingly renew the fond allegiance of these declining years to a cause far dearer than my own life. I have no personal ambition to gratify, no additional honors to seek. The good people of Oregon, Washington and Idaho long ago bestowed upon me more than the ordinary meed of human praise and position, without the asking. For all of this I am profoundly grateful; but my life work is not finished, nor will it be till the women of New Oregon, relieved of their present political rating among idiots, insane persons and criminals, shall stand before the women voters of Old Oregon’s youngest daughter, the fair State of Idaho, as free as they from the stigma of disenfranchisement. We look confidently to the voters, our beloved fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, to relieve us of this stigma. For this reason, we call upon every woman who loves liberty to lay aside every factional interest she may cherish, and every personal ambition she may crave. Then, with a long pull, a strong pull and a pull all together, we may outride every storm and land our ship in the haven of freedom alongside that of our friends, the liberty-loving voters of the state, upon whom the patriotic mothers of men are every ready to bestow good and not evil, in proportion to their own opportunities. The present is no time for argument. Every thinking and reflecting son of woman knows that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that the women of these United States outside of the States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, are taxed without representation and governed without consent. What men need, to induce them to vote for the enfranchisement of women, is the sincere conviction that by their affirmative votes they will not bring us into our inheritance as their rulers or enemies, but as their helpers, co-workers and friends. We must let them know that the majority of women are not seeking to enact arbitrary laws for the government of men, but the blessings of freedom for ourselves that we may unite with them in securing and maintaining a government of the people, for the people and by the people. We have much to encourage us. The entire civilized world is agitating this question and making progress toward the equal rights of the mothers of men before the laws under which all must live. Step by step our own government is extending us recognition. Our own Governor of Oregon<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_16_94" id="identifier_16_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="George Earle Chamberlain (1854-1920): born near Natchez, Mississippi; graduate of Washington & Lee University in Virginia; emigrated to Oregon, 1876; state representative from Linn County, 1880-82; elected district attorney for Third Judicial District, 1884; appointed Attorney General of Oregon, 1891-95; district attorney, Multnomah County, 1900-03; Governor, 1903-09; elected U.S. Senator, 1908, first senator chosen by people rather than legislature; re-elected 1914; defeated for third term, 1920, he was appointed to U.S. Shipping Board; Democrat (Corning 50; Gaston, Portland 3: 205-08; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 37-40; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 37-41; “Biography: Chamberlain, George E.,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 78).">16, our own Mayor of Portland<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_17_94" id="identifier_17_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harry Lane (1855-1917): Portland’s first populist mayor, who clashed repeatedly with corrupt authorities; born Corvallis; graduated with medical degree from Willamette University, 1876; appointed superintendent, state hospital for insane, 1887; mayor, 1905-09; U.S. Senate, 1913 until death, where worked particularly in child labor, pure food, and Indian affairs; final Senate vote was against resolution committing U.S. to entry in World War I; grandson of Gen. Joseph Lane, first territorial governor; Democrat (Corning 142; “Biography: Lane, Harry,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.).">17 and the majority of our clergy, our leading lawyers, orators and Judges are our open and avowed allies. The State Editorial Association is with us almost to a man. The Socialists, the Prohibitionists, the Labor party, the State and National Grange, and Republicans and Democrats outside the party machine, are demanding our enfranchisement. If I do not mention the different associations of women, which in large majority are backing us from all over the state, as well as they are able, it is because women do not, as yet, have votes. We used to have the negro, the Indian and the Chinaman as our political equals, but modern legislation has reached out its law-making hand, and, grasping the negro by his wool, the Indian by his scalp and the Chinaman by his queue, has rescued these gentlemen of color from the governmental companionship of the idiotic, insane and criminal classes, leaving us, the mothers, wives and daughters of the voters, to endure a political rating to which no sensible man can blame patriotic women for objecting with honorable indignation. For our work in making way for liberty during the coming year, I would suggest the formation of governmental study clubs, for which I have ordered textbooks. Let us, while following the line of least resistance, inform ourselves upon such topics as the intelligent voter approves. That our enfranchisement is coming and coming speedily, nobody doubts. The recent ravings against the women voters of Colorado attest the dire straits in which that time-honored institution, the political machine, finds itself floundering.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-17-1906/#footnote_18_94" id="identifier_18_94" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Energized by Populism, Colorado had been the first state to adopt equal suffrage by popular referendum, during the economic panic of 1893 (Wyoming was yet a territory when its legislature granted women the vote in 1869). Thirteen years later, claiming that equal suffrage had been a failure and was opposed by most citizens, some Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature schemed to introduce a constitutional amendment revoking women’s franchise. They noted that only nine women ever had been elected to the lower house, and none to the senate, and that all four women who had run for seats in the house that year had been defeated. Its alleged popularity notwithstanding, proponents had difficulty finding a champion who would risk women’s wrath at the polls by introducing the amendment (Denver Post 12 Nov. 1906, 15 Nov. 1906).">18 Read the forthcoming facts in the daily press and you will see on and between the lines the real reason for the discomfiture of such tax-eaters as under equal suffrage find their occupation gone, and, like our father Adam, lay the blame for their downfall on the women whom God gave to be with them, because, as co-workers, according to their own record, he saw it was not good for man to be alone. Let us prepare ourselves for the responsible duties of citizenship, as, with malice toward none and with charity for all, we stand by the right as God giveth us wisdom to see the right, seeking first the kingdom of liberty and its honor in the firm belief that all other blessings shall be added thereunto as rapidly as a free and united people can be made ready to receive them. NOTES She was organizing mass temperance meetings in the state as early as 1893; organized four unions in Crook County the following year, including one on the Warms Springs reservation; state W.C.T.U. corresponding secretary, 1907, president, c. 1909-12 (Crawford 5-9). On the W.C.T.U.’s efforts in the Pacific Northwest more generally, see Soden. (1846-1920): daughter of Aaron Rose and Minerva Kelley (or Kellogg); mother died at Lucy’s birth; father remarried fifteen months later and family emigrated to Oregon from Michigan, 1851, settling on donation claim that became Roseburg, named after family; married Rufus Mallory (1831-1914), prominent attorney and politician, who arrived in Jacksonville from Iowa, 1859, on June 24, 1860, when 14, in Roseburg, where he had taught school for fifteen months and she had been his pupil; he was state attorney, 1860, 1862-66, in state legislature, 1862, U.S. Congress, 1867-69, Speaker of Oregon House, 1872, U.S. District Attorney for Oregon, 1874-82, twice delegate to Republican National Convention, 1868, 1888, twice president of Republican state conventions; she founded, edited, and published (for more than thirty years) “Companion-Papers,” World’s Advance Thought and Universal Republic, advocating universal equality of the sexes, vegetarianism, universal language and money, universal peace, cooperation and love; firm believer in spiritualism, gave psychic readings in rear of Mallory Hotel, where she also published her magazine; moved to San Jose, California, following 1917 death of only son, Elmer E. Mallory; died in San Jose in September (Corning 156; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 541-42; Hines 273-74; Gaston, Portland 2: 5-7; Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 98; Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days,” Oregon Journal 12 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 142-45; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919, 4 Sept. 1920; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 4: 45). (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”). Scott Duniway blamed Bewick Colby for engineering the attempted coup, calling her the dissidents’ candidate for “President de facto, under the name of Vice-President” (Path Breaking 229). Prominent clubwoman (joined Portland Woman’s Club while living in Vancouver, Washington, 1897; also Women’s State Press Club and Coterie); first president, equal suffrage association in Vermont; school board, Vancouver, Washington; temperance advocate (Band of Hope, Daughter of Temperance, Good Templar, and W.C.T.U.); Oregon representative to A.W.S.A. convention, Philadelphia, 1912; Progressive candidate for Portland councilman-at-large and city commissioner, 1913, and state representative from Multnomah County, favoring semi-annual tax payments and abolition of delinquent penalty, consolidation of state boards and commissions, national woman suffrage, state and national Prohibition, longer terms of office, “laws preparing for the influx of immigrants via Panama Canal,” school elections under general election law, universal eight-hour day except on farms, 1914; wife of Jackson Hidden (Scrapbook #50: 100, OR Hist. Soc.; “Second Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1897-8,” Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.). This quarrel had deep roots. Eight years before, Scott Duniway and Trenholm Hidden had fought essentially the same battle in the pages of the Pacific Empire. On January 6, 1898, Abigail blamed the Washington reversal on prohibitionists, provoking an outraged response from Trenholm Hidden, who defended “Christianized methods” for a “moral and spiritual” movement (17 Mar. 1898). Abigail retorted the following week (24 Mar. 1898) and, the week after that (31 Mar. 1898), Trenholm Hidden had what clearly was not the final word. (1841-1913): “with the possible exception of” Scott Duniway herself, “the best known of the pioneer women of Oregon”; born Missouri; daughter of William Catesby and Mary Jane Yeargain Laughlin, 1850 pioneers in The Dalles; on New Year’s Day, 1861, married Wintworth Lord (1832-1917), merchant, cattle- and sheep-man, and miller, who came to The Dalles from California, 1858; one of first proponents of suffrage in Oregon; vice-president, O.S.E.S.A., at death and “one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s most valuable aides”; president, Women’s Political Study club, a local suffrage society; First Reader, Christian Science Church of The Dalles; member, Sorosis; “a lady of marked literary taste and ability, and the author of a number of interesting articles and books,” including Reminiscences of Eastern Oregon, her diary of family’s overland journey and early years, 1903; “a woman of charming personality and of exceptionally brilliant mind even until the day of her death”; among fifty most outstanding people in history of Wasco County; died in August of heart trouble; two children, one who survived (McNeal 52, 65; Illustrated History of Central Oregon 278; Sunday Oregonian 4 Mar. 1917; Sarah Evans, “Women’s Clubs, Women’s Work,” Oregon Sunday Journal 20 Nov. 1904; Scrapbook #44: 87, #50: 86, OR Hist. Soc.; “Mrs. Lord is Called Suddenly,” Vertical File, “Biography-‘Lo’”, OR Hist. Soc.). In Path Breaking, Abigail describes her as “a pioneer of the early ‘40s” (216). (1825-1919): physician whose practice focused on women’s medicine, particularly childbirth; born New York City; married Reuben Thompson (?-1885), LaSalle, Illinois, 1847; studied medicine with Drs. Bry and Larkin in LaSalle in time before most medical schools accepted women; said to have been first woman practitioner in Illinois and Iowa; Portland’s first woman physician, 1867, where she practiced for twenty years; provided for six children and (like Scott Duniway) incapacitated husband; charter member, O.S.W.S.A., and prohibitionist who believed in women’s natural moral superiority, sparring constantly with Scott Duniway over movement goals; “one of the most influential women” in Portland history (Corning 243; Larsell 414; Moynihan, Rebel 147, 149, 187; Woman’s Tribune 29 Feb. 1908). Mrs. Imogene Bath, of Hillsboro, who was elected an auditor. She probably was the wife of D. W. Bath, editor and owner of the Hillsboro Independent. This summary is derived from entertaining accounts in the Sunday Oregonian and the Oregon Journal, both for November 4, 1906; the latter is somewhat more sympathetic to the dissident faction. But Abigail here does refer to it. Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting), O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608). Insisting upon “my right to name my successor,” Abigail hand-picked Boley Coe for the Presidency when she resigned the office in 1905 to protest the National’s interference (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 225). (1834-1878): born Sussex, England; began writing verse at 15; published first collection, Guesses at the Beautiful, 1852; emigrated to U.S., 1854; accompanied free-state emigrants to Kansas, 1856, becoming associate of John Brown; served in 88th Illinois regiment during Civil War, writing some of his best lyrics; established school for freedmen in South Carolina, 1868; removed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1870, becoming journalist and lecturer; “a brilliant talker and a fine orator”; unhappy matrimony drove him to suicide (“Richard Realf“). The passage emends a portion of “Written on the Night of His Suicide”: Nor did he wait till Freedom had become The popular shibboleth of courtier’s lips; He smote for her when God himself seemed dumb And all His arching skies were in eclipse. (Realf 34) Three months earlier, in a commentary on the electoral defeat, the Oregonian had reiterated its opposition to woman suffrage but credited Abigail with instigating and carrying on the fight “unceasingly” for forty years: “whatever progress it has made has been due to her, more than to all other agencies together. But for her, indeed, the subject would scarcely have been mentioned in Oregon to this day, and little considered. The progress it has made is an extraordinary tribute to one woman’s energy.” Then the paper quoted these same lines from Realf and concluded: “If woman suffrage is a synonym of freedom, as its advocates claim, these lines are fit eulogy of Abigail Scott Duniway” (20 Aug. 1906, qtd. in Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 205. From the Declaration of Independence: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.” George Earle Chamberlain (1854-1920): born near Natchez, Mississippi; graduate of Washington & Lee University in Virginia; emigrated to Oregon, 1876; state representative from Linn County, 1880-82; elected district attorney for Third Judicial District, 1884; appointed Attorney General of Oregon, 1891-95; district attorney, Multnomah County, 1900-03; Governor, 1903-09; elected U.S. Senator, 1908, first senator chosen by people rather than legislature; re-elected 1914; defeated for third term, 1920, he was appointed to U.S. Shipping Board; Democrat (Corning 50; Gaston, Portland 3: 205-08; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 37-40; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 37-41; “Biography: Chamberlain, George E.,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 78). Harry Lane (1855-1917): Portland’s first populist mayor, who clashed repeatedly with corrupt authorities; born Corvallis; graduated with medical degree from Willamette University, 1876; appointed superintendent, state hospital for insane, 1887; mayor, 1905-09; U.S. Senate, 1913 until death, where worked particularly in child labor, pure food, and Indian affairs; final Senate vote was against resolution committing U.S. to entry in World War I; grandson of Gen. Joseph Lane, first territorial governor; Democrat (Corning 142; “Biography: Lane, Harry,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.). Energized by Populism, Colorado had been the first state to adopt equal suffrage by popular referendum, during the economic panic of 1893 (Wyoming was yet a territory when its legislature granted women the vote in 1869). Thirteen years later, claiming that equal suffrage had been a failure and was opposed by most citizens, some Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature schemed to introduce a constitutional amendment revoking women’s franchise. They noted that only nine women ever had been elected to the lower house, and none to the senate, and that all four women who had run for seats in the house that year had been defeated. Its alleged popularity notwithstanding, proponents had difficulty finding a champion who would risk women’s wrath at the polls by introducing the amendment (Denver Post 12 Nov. 1906, 15 Nov. 1906).
“UPWARD STEPS IN A THIRD OF A CENTURY” – circa February 7-13, 1906
When the National American Woman Suffrage Association met for its thirty-eighth convention at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, “the need of the hour” was Oregon. Throughout its proceedings, the upcoming June referendum “was the uppermost thought”: Appeals were made for funds, plans were made in business meetings, and “hopeful” speeches of “probable success” were delivered.1 […]
When the National American Woman Suffrage Association met for its thirty-eighth convention at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, “the need of the hour” was Oregon. Throughout its proceedings, the upcoming June referendum “was the uppermost thought”: Appeals were made for funds, plans were made in business meetings, and “hopeful” speeches of “probable success” were delivered.1 One of these speeches was written by the embattled former president of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, Abigail Scott Duniway; when she could not attend, it was presented by another delegate from the Land of Webfoot, her niece, Lillian Cooke Olds.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cupward-steps-in-a-third-of-a-century%e2%80%9d-circa-february-7-13-1906/#footnote_2_92" id="identifier_2_92" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(?-1914): born Lafayette, Oregon; daughter of Amos and Mary Frances Scott Cook (1833-1930), Abigail’s older sister; married William Parker Olds (1857-?), successful merchant who was president of Olds, Wortman, and King department store, Portland Woolen Mills, and Portland Retail Dealers Association, 1880; active in Unitarian Church, Women’s Union, Mann Old People’s Home, and Florence Crittenton Home; loved music and literature; died April 6, of heart failure after several months of ill health (Gaston, Portland 2: 400-03; Oregon Daily Journal 7 Apr. 1914; Morning Oregonian 7 Apr. 1914; Scrapbook #49: 206, OR Hist. Soc.).">2 Amid continuing controversy over her past leadership and methods, Scott Duniway felt compelled to defend herself. Thus, this address melds several familiar themes. It lavishes praise on Oregon and on the progressive thinking to be found there. It appeals to the “chivalrous” instincts of the men who live there. It also posits ever-increasing support for the cause of equal suffrage, in order to convey a sense of momentum–even inevitability–and thereby reassure doubters and detractors. More antagonistically, Scott Duniway rebukes the “one-idead” who would link prohibition with women’s enfranchisement, and explicitly defends her “still hunt” methods. Most interesting, and perhaps just as divisive, however, is her evident disdain of privilege. Always lurking beneath her refrain that Oregon is a land of special destiny where women have earned equal rights, a class-based argument, which attributes disagreement over strategy to the difference between wealthy, indolent women and hard-working pioneers like herself, surfaces here. But the die was cast, and Scott Duniway’s arguments were futile. Within a month, Susan B. Anthony would die and a host of suffragists would descend upon Oregon, to campaign in symbolic tribute to her memory. Temperance women wearing white ribbons for prohibition would become the most visible campaigners in the public eye. Abigail would be “ignored and slandered, her methods ridiculed.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cupward-steps-in-a-third-of-a-century%e2%80%9d-circa-february-7-13-1906/#footnote_3_92" id="identifier_3_92" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Moynihan, Rebel 212. Headed by Anna Howard Shaw, the campaigners included Laura Clay, Alice Stone Blackwell, and Kate M. Gordon, national officers all, as well as Mary S. and Lucy E. Anthony, publicist Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania, and national organizers Laura A. Gregg of Kansas, Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado, and Gail Laughlin of Illinois (History of Woman Suffrage 6: 542).">3 Scott Duniway’s address was published in several newspapers, including the Sunday Oregonian of February 11, 1906, and the Oregon State Journal of February 17. I follow the former, with minor discrepancies noted. Madam President, Members of the Convention, Ladies and Gentlemen: The State of Oregon is glad to bring to you the greetings of her progressive citizens from every part of her broad domain, which reaches from the tree-clad summits of her mighty mountain ranges to the embroidered edges of her sundown seas. Although she is as yet an infant state as compared with Maryland, New York or Massachusetts, Oregon today stands pre-eminent before the world in the array of her equal suffrage forces as the only state within the Union [where women do not]4 possess the right of suffrage in which our movement has any reasonable prospect of early triumph. Although Oregon today represents a population of only about half a million souls, scattered over an area of 92,974 square miles, yet this sparse population represents a taxable valuation of property amounting to many hundreds of millions of dollars. Her products include every variety of merchantable, manufactured, agricultural and mineral output known to the temperate zones. Her scenery is indescribably magnificent, her soil is exceedingly fertile and her climate is mild, diversified, healthy and salubrious. Her common schools and institutions of higher learning have already attained renown, her churches are second to none and her moral tone is equal to the highest average anywhere. But great as have been the achievements of her people, in tunneling the mountains, leveling the forests, erecting the habitations, building the bridges, draining the lowlands and irrigating the arid belts, all of which abound within the confines of her vast empire, greater by far are her broad-brained, big-hearted men, who, having represented themselves in their part of the development of the country, are now moving forward in a self-respecting phalanx, determined, if not outvoted by one-idea objectors, to extend to their wives and mothers the equal political rights and privileges which men enjoy, and which came to them without the asking. Although occasional settlements of white people began to take root and grow in Oregon in the early years of the 19th century, it was not till the year 1843 that a regular path or beaten track was made across the continent by men and women who consumed six months or longer in their hazardous march, with teams of oxen, toward the setting sun. Much heavier emigration from the older states followed the earlier pathfinders in the years 1845-6-7, but the greatest activity in migration began in 1850, and was increased to far greater proportions in 1851 and ‘52, when thousands of men, women and children plunged bravely into the almost unknown wilderness, many of them, alas, to die beside their faithful oxen, without a glimpse of the Promised Land, but many more surviving to reach the goal<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cupward-steps-in-a-third-of-a-century%e2%80%9d-circa-february-7-13-1906/#footnote_5_92" id="identifier_5_92" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway’s family made the trek in the “big migration” of 1852. Her mother, Ann Roelofson Scott, died of “plains cholera” near Laramie, Wyoming, on June 20. Three-and-a-half year old Willie Scott succumbed to “cholera infantum, or dropsy of the brain” on August 29, along the Snake River (Moynihan, Rebel 35, 39). Chapter 3 of Moynihan’s Rebel for Rights recounts the journey. Abigail’s “Journal of a Trip to Oregon” can be found in the Duniway Papers, and on microfilm at the Oregon Historical Society. Scott’s History of the Oregon Country contains a short synopsis that Abigail wrote in 1900 (3: 246-49), and a day-by-day narrative compiled by her nephew (Harvey’s son), Leslie, from her journal and other sources (3: 249-325).">5 and begin the work which today sees the whole of Oregon divided into three prosperous and mighty states, in one of which, the State of Idaho, the men and women together already enjoy the united and equal station, designed by the Creator, when he gave to men and women joint dominion over all the earth and everything upon and within it except each other. Oregon came into the Union as a territorial addition to the vast domain of these United States, bringing with her the spirit of liberty and justice, engendered and cultivated by minute acquaintance with the extent and magnitude of her environments. And, let it ever be remembered to the credit of men, thus environed, that Oregon was the first division of the Nation’s great domain to gain for married women, the producers of men, the right to hold, in fee simple, by direct deed from the United States Government, through special act of Congress, the soil upon which their children were born, where they could, for the first time in the history of nations, own their own primitive homes and protect their children from wild beasts and wilder savages with their own rifles, when their husbands were on duty in the chase or the field. Is it any wonder that sons of women such as these are today preparing to cast their votes for the extension to the daughters of such men as these the full recognition of their inalienable right to a voice in the government which they are taxed to maintain and to whose laws they are held amenable? Is it any wonder that such men are saying to such women, “Come up higher?” Is it any wonder that such men are saying to such women, “We, your fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, will henceforth claim no rights, emoluments or duties for ourselves which we are not willing to share with you, at your option”? This was the almost universal sentiment among our voters when our great National American Woman Suffrage Association met in Portland, in convention last June. Leading women from every part of the Union were surprised to meet this unanimity of sentiment, and our National officers were both pleased and amazed, but the leaders in Oregon, who had been on the ground from the beginning, and especially its original and devoted, and for many years its only standard bearer, had no reason to be amazed, for we knew the men of Old Oregon to be as chivalrous and patriotic as they were magnanimous and free. Under the new Constitutional ruling that now prevails with us through the Initiative and Referendum Amendment6, the progressive men of the state have carried our movement beyond the dictum of the State Legislative Assembly, out into the untrammeled arena of the ballot box, where the voter may mark his ballot in secret with no politician at his elbow to molest him or make him afraid. If this secret ballot were not a two-edged sword, which may cut both ways, we could have no fear of the result of the coming June election. As a military General would be recreant to his highest duty if he should neglect or refuse to consider every possible move of the enemy pitted against his army before going into battle, so, in this connection, I must tell you of two great obstructions in our path which are pulling together, though ostensibly against each other, which to all intents and purposes are operating to defeat our patriotic army of voters. And these forces are both in the field and were never so active as now. One of these armies, the party of the first part, has the unlimited power of the ballot at its back, accompanied by the unlimited use of money<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cupward-steps-in-a-third-of-a-century%e2%80%9d-circa-february-7-13-1906/#footnote_7_92" id="identifier_7_92" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The liquor and related trades. Just two weeks before the election, the Brewers’ and Wholesale Liquor Dealers’ Association of Oregon circulated to every retail liquor seller in the state a pamphlet requesting each retailer to secure twenty-five “nay” votes from among his employees and business acquaintances. It contained tickets for distribution, demonstrating how to mark one’s ballot, and a numbered postcard that was to be returned to the Association to prove compliance. Although the scheme was uncovered and publicized, the arm-twisting worked. More than many suffragists, Abigail possessed a realistic understanding of the mischief that this enemy, if stirred up, could work (Moynihan, Rebel 212; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 543-44).">7, and the party of the second part, blinded with the infatuation of its one idea, cannot be prevailed upon to retreat to cover because it thinks it sees the ballot already in woman’s grasp8; and so it is measuring woman’s political weakness with the power of the party of the first part, that is fully armed with votes and capital. And this party of the second part, which is campaigning in the open while its balloted opponents work in ambush, will not see that it is being used merely as a cat’s paw to rake from the fires of politics the chestnuts of one-idead politicians, who care nothing for our success or failure, as equal suffragists, except as they hope to use the ballots of women for the achievement of their one ambition. The balloted power of the party of the first part has, in addition to its immense voting constituency, a reinforcement of a few idle and wealthy women, who openly proclaim that they have no sympathy with the great industrial and productive classes of women who are making the world habitable. And the party of the first part is using this power of wealth and idleness as a cat’s paw to rake its chestnuts from the fires of politics, thus placing our movement between two opposing forces, the first of which is rooted in every rye and barley field, every hopyard and drying-house, every vineyard and every saloon and bank and brewery and transportation line, and reaches into the pockets not only of all these vested interests, but affects the financial accommodations of thousands of landlords, many of whom are pillars of our churches, who think they see in the enfranchisement of women a menace to their direct means of gain or livelihood. This party of balloted hosts includes also the ironminer, the smelter and hoopiron manufacturer, the glassblower, the bottler, the tax-gatherer and bartender, all of whom have votes, while beyond and over all of these diversified interests stands the Federal Government, raking in a tremendous revenue, backed by the municipal power of every chartered city of almost every town. In view of facts like these, I am hoping, though almost against hope, that the wisest men in the party of the first part will be able to see in the enfranchisement of the women of Oregon the same power to cure the emotional politics of women that has cured the women of the four states that have already extended the elective franchise to the wives and mothers within their borders. No man in Oregon needs to be told that taxation without representation is tyranny. But the newcomers among us do not generally know that the women of our state were granted by the Legislative Assembly in the year 1872, an act entitled “The Married Woman’s Sole Trader Bill,” which enables any woman, when compelled from whatever cause to support or help support her family, to hold her stock in trade or implements of industry secure from seizure by the creditors of her husband.9 Afterwards, as the years advanced and men continued to grow in wisdom and chivalry, the Legislature created other laws, almost all of them in advance of laws made by older states, all tending to the final elevation of the mothers of men from the political companionship of idiots, insane persons, criminals, Chinamen not native born, and Indians not taxed. But this granting of privileges to women in lieu of rights has served in the light of experience, to increase our demand for fundamental rights by showing us more and more clearly the necessity therefor. In the year 1884 we sought and obtained, through the Legislative Assembly, the privilege to submit to the voters a proposition to amend the state constitution by striking the word “male” from its article on privileges and elections. And this movement, which started in 1872, from the small beginning before noted, we found by actual count, had grown from almost nothing, in 14 years, to fully one-third of the entire vote of the state. In the year 1900 we were permitted by legislative enactment to appeal to the voters again, with the result that the men at the ballot boxes throughout the state gave us over 48 per cent of the entire vote, and two-thirds of the counties giving us large majorities. But our geometrical progression alarmed the manipulators of the political machine, and a cry was raised that we [were] required to win a two-thirds majority of all the votes cast in the state, counted on the basis of the highest number of the vote cast on any question, or for any candidate whomsoever. And the initiative and referendum amendment, which only requires a majority vote on the question at issue, being already on its way to the voters, we resolved to retreat to cover, follow the line of least resistance, till the undisputed right of the majority to rule should become a law. In pursuance of this plan, I, as president of the State Equal Suffrage Association for many years, called off our suffrage forces and organized and carried on a still hunt, which was so adroitly managed that our opponents when they awoke and found that in enlarging their opportunities they had materially advanced our own, were taken completely by surprise. The industrial changes which have been going on in the civilized world for years, reached Oregon in due time, bringing women into ruinous competition with the balloted classes by taking from them so much of their opportunity to earn, or help to earn a livelihood within the home that many of them have been compelled to find work outside of the home if they are to have any homes at all to keep. The men, God bless them, are carrying our fruit to canneries and evaporators, and have deprived us of that means of revenue. They have taken our washing to laundries, our dairy work to creameries and our bread and pastry-making to bakeries and confectioneries. The woman cook has been supplanted by the masculine chef. The waiters and chambermaids of our first-class hostelries are men, and even the man milliner and dressmaker are making our clothes. The farmer’s wife still drudges at the old stand, but her sons long ago left the old way, and her daughters followed in due course, entering as wage-earners into woman’s competition with balloted men, bringing wages down, and the price of living commodities up. Our foremost thinkers see, not only these conditions but the causes that have led thereto, and have learned that there is but one solution to these problems of work and wages, so the wisest man says, “Give woman the ballot and let her own works praise her in the gates.” The men of Oregon are making history. Our great Lewis and Clark Exposition placed her in the lime light of the world. No other state has come so strongly into notice since the beginning of the 20th century. “As goes Oregon so goes the Union,” has been the motto in many a bloodless battle of ballots. And when the ides of June shall have come and gone, if the fiat shall have gone forth proclaiming that her wives and mothers have been made equal with her husbands and fathers before the law, the whole progressive world will sound her praises as never before. In any event we will never give up the struggle till we win, for then and not till then can men and women both be free indeed. NOTES History of Woman Suffrage 5: 161. (?-1914): born Lafayette, Oregon; daughter of Amos and Mary Frances Scott Cook (1833-1930), Abigail’s older sister; married William Parker Olds (1857-?), successful merchant who was president of Olds, Wortman, and King department store, Portland Woolen Mills, and Portland Retail Dealers Association, 1880; active in Unitarian Church, Women’s Union, Mann Old People’s Home, and Florence Crittenton Home; loved music and literature; died April 6, of heart failure after several months of ill health (Gaston, Portland 2: 400-03; Oregon Daily Journal 7 Apr. 1914; Morning Oregonian 7 Apr. 1914; Scrapbook #49: 206, OR Hist. Soc.). Moynihan, Rebel 212. Headed by Anna Howard Shaw, the campaigners included Laura Clay, Alice Stone Blackwell, and Kate M. Gordon, national officers all, as well as Mary S. and Lucy E. Anthony, publicist Ida Porter Boyer of Pennsylvania, and national organizers Laura A. Gregg of Kansas, Mary C. C. Bradford of Colorado, and Gail Laughlin of Illinois (History of Woman Suffrage 6: 542). OSJ: “except the four where women already” Scott Duniway’s family made the trek in the “big migration” of 1852. Her mother, Ann Roelofson Scott, died of “plains cholera” near Laramie, Wyoming, on June 20. Three-and-a-half year old Willie Scott succumbed to “cholera infantum, or dropsy of the brain” on August 29, along the Snake River (Moynihan, Rebel 35, 39). Chapter 3 of Moynihan’s Rebel for Rights recounts the journey. Abigail’s “Journal of a Trip to Oregon” can be found in the Duniway Papers, and on microfilm at the Oregon Historical Society. Scott’s History of the Oregon Country contains a short synopsis that Abigail wrote in 1900 (3: 246-49), and a day-by-day narrative compiled by her nephew (Harvey’s son), Leslie, from her journal and other sources (3: 249-325). “A Pioneer Incident” n. 2. The liquor and related trades. Just two weeks before the election, the Brewers’ and Wholesale Liquor Dealers’ Association of Oregon circulated to every retail liquor seller in the state a pamphlet requesting each retailer to secure twenty-five “nay” votes from among his employees and business acquaintances. It contained tickets for distribution, demonstrating how to mark one’s ballot, and a numbered postcard that was to be returned to the Association to prove compliance. Although the scheme was uncovered and publicized, the arm-twisting worked. More than many suffragists, Abigail possessed a realistic understanding of the mischief that this enemy, if stirred up, could work (Moynihan, Rebel 212; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 543-44). Prohibitionists Richey, “Unsinkable” 87; Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881.
BUSINESS WOMAN’S LEAGUE OF SAN FRANCISCO – November 17, 1905
By 1905 the woman’s club movement certainly was well-established, even on the West Coast. However, it was not universally acclaimed. On Monday, November 13, the local district of the Federated Women’s Clubs of California assembled in San Francisco for its annual convention, prompting the Reverend Frederick W. Clampett, rector of the city’s Trinity Church, to […]
By 1905 the woman’s club movement certainly was well-established, even on the West Coast. However, it was not universally acclaimed. On Monday, November 13, the local district of the Federated Women’s Clubs of California assembled in San Francisco for its annual convention, prompting the Reverend Frederick W. Clampett, rector of the city’s Trinity Church, to chastise the “new women” meeting nearby: Women are taking more and more the place of men, and the undoubted effect of this has been to change in great measure the special place that women should occupy. She is now paying, and paying hard, for her keen competition with man. We can behold the change in the gradual decline of that gallant and courteous relationship that the past so strongly portrays as between men and women. She must stand up in the crowded cars and hold on to the strap. . . . The stream of tendency is against home influences, the permanence of the marriage tie, the glory of offspring. Woman must assert her womanhood in rebellion against those influences.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/business-woman%e2%80%99s-league-of-san-francisco-november-17-1905/#footnote_1_90" id="identifier_1_90" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Federation district meeting was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, November 13, 1905. Apparently, Clampett rebuked the women both before and after: “from the pulpit” on Sunday, the 12th and, again, before the Episcopal Convocation of San Francisco, meeting in Grace Church, on Tuesday, the 14th (San Francisco Examiner 18 Nov. 1905; San Francisco Chronicle 15 Nov. 1905). The San Francisco Chronicle published Clampett’s remarks on the front page on November 15, in a story entitled “New Woman Rebuked,” which also quotes several dissenting fellow clergy. The Chronicle also reported reactions of several members of the Forum Club in “The Ladies and the Cleric” on November 16.">1 Scott Duniway, who arrived in the city on Wednesday, the 15th 2, undoubtedly read Clampett’s comments in that day’s newspaper. Surely she was especially galled by the reverend’s criticism of working women. Two days later, speaking before the Business Woman’s League on Friday evening in the Parrott Building, she seized her opportunity to retort. The San Francisco Examiner covered the story the following day.<a href="https://asduniway.org/business-woman%e2%80%99s-league-of-san-francisco-november-17-1905/#footnote_3_90" id="identifier_3_90" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="18 Nov. 1905. Accounts of this address also reached Oregon. In a very similar story, containing nearly identical excerpts, the following week, the Portland Evening Telegram reported that “one of the best-known society and clubwomen of Portland” (a description that surely pleased and amused Abigail) had risen to answer the charge that clubs “are destructive of domesticity and the social structure generally” (22 Nov. 1905). Abigail also spent at least the following week in San Francisco as the guest of Mary A. Wells. That Monday (November 20), she addressed the Susan B. Anthony Club in celebration of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birthday; that Friday (November 24), the Business Woman’s League gave a reception at Clara Shortridge Foltz’s home (San Francisco Examiner 18 Nov. 1905; San Francisco Chronicle 26 Nov. 1905).">3 “Mrs. Duniway,” it observed, “is venerable and of benevolent countenance, and under the lace cap that she wears is a brain of remarkable power. She speaks with moderation and fluency, has a fund of anecdotes with which to emphasize her arguments, is gentle in manner and good-naturedly sarcastic. She gave Dr. Clampett a motherly castigation that kept her audience in what is tritely termed ‘gales of laughter.’” Introduced by her friend and collaborator of thirty years, league president Clara Shortridge Foltz<a href="https://asduniway.org/business-woman%e2%80%99s-league-of-san-francisco-november-17-1905/#footnote_4_90" id="identifier_4_90" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1849-1934): California’s first woman lawyer, 1878; president, California Woman Suffrage Association, early 1880s; publisher, New American Woman, 1916-18; advocate for penal reform and public defenders for poor; first woman deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, 1911-13; declined appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921; candidate in 1930 Republican gubernatorial primary, running on equal rights platform. Mistreated by her spouse and needing money for her children, young Mrs. Foltz sewed for Scott Duniway’s millinery store and wrote for New Northwest before moving to California in 1875 (Gilb, “Foltz”; Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 96).">4, Abigail reportedly began by summarizing “the advantages which the larger liberty of club life brings to women,” and then “dwelt upon the fact that the ranks of clubdom are not recruited mainly from young mothers with multifarious domestic duties . . . but from mature women who, having raised their families, needed diversion . . .” At this point, the Examiner began quoting Scott Duniway: “There is no occupation for the superannuated,” said the speaker, smiling quizzically, “that large class of women called ‘surplus,’ who have no husbands to cook for, no children to care for. Dr. Osler doesn’t come around to chloroform them.<a href="https://asduniway.org/business-woman%e2%80%99s-league-of-san-francisco-november-17-1905/#footnote_5_90" id="identifier_5_90" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Osler (1849-1919): “the most influential doctor of his age”; born Tecumseh, Ontario, Canada; Trinity College, Toronto, 1868; M.D., McGill University, 1872; further education University College, London, and Universities of Berlin and Vienna, 1872-74; professor of medicine, McGill, 1874-84, University of Pennsylvania, 1884-89, Johns Hopkins University, 1889-1905 (also physician-in-chief, Johns Hopkins Hospital), Oxford University, 1905–; author, definitive studies of many ailments including cerebral palsies, angina pectoris, and cancer; especially known for Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1912; Baronet of the United Kingdom, 1911 (“Robert Fulford’s column about William Osler“; Who was Who 922). Osler possessed a mischievous sense of humor. For years he wrote letters to medical journals, under the pseudonym Egerton Yorrick Davis, reporting fictitious case histories of bizarre sexual maladies. Scott Duniway’s reference is to his farewell address at Johns Hopkins earlier in 1905, in which the good doctor suggested that all important advances were made by those under 40 and that those reaching 60 should be chloroformed. Osler insisted that his remarks were not meant literally, but the newspapers fomented a minor scandal and, for a time, “oslerize” became a synonym for “euthanize” (“Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis“; Oakland Tribune 23 Feb. 1905; “Robert Fulford’s column about William Osler“).">5 What are they going to do? Wash dishes? Embroider altar cloths? Mend the vestments of the clergy? As for those who have husbands, in these days of convenient invention, they can go home after a club meeting, turn up the gas, press a button and have a meal delivered when it is wanted. Dr. Clampett would have us all cooking, sewing on buttons, embroidering altar cloths, dressing chorus boys, sweeping, dusting, darning and meeting a husband at the proverbial door with the proverbial smile. But we can’t all get husbands. There aren’t enough of the right sort of men to go around. Every good woman likes men a great deal better than she likes women. That is the truth, my sisters, so why deny it? Many years ago, when I had a husband and sons growing up around my table, I realized this, and in those conservative days even dared to express my opinion in public. A woman who doesn’t like men”–Mrs. Duniway laid emphasis upon the words–“is always a vinegary, cross-grained creature, who owes an apology to the men for living. She ought to steal away and die. “Dr. Clampett’s arguments are as old as the hills. I have heard them from dead decades to the present hour. Perhaps he merely used them to wake up the women. If so, he has succeeded. Throughout San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda, hundreds of women are pointing to their well kept homes, happy children and contented husbands to disprove the reverend gentleman’s statements. “Men are living at clubs, it is said, because women do not make homes sufficiently attractive. Well, I assure you that they get far better service and far more comforts–which they pay for–than they did when they were ministered to by one weary pair of hands that had meanwhile to rock the cradle (in some imaginary way likewise ‘ruling’ the world), perform the drudgery of the household, sew for the family, and make altar cloths for the church. Women will not go back to the old regime of being servants without wages, so what is our reverend brother going to do about it? It is, by the way, a curious fact that the homes in which murders are committed are invariably those where the women murdered do not belong to clubs, but are ‘protected’ by their husbands. “I beg the clergyman to possess his soul in patience. The great laws of nature will never be diverted from their primal uses. Women are neither better nor worse than men. The government of a country is nothing more nor less than home written large. And, old and ugly as I am,” added Mrs. Duniway, smiling, “I have a dozen chances to marry right now.6 As for political equality, the cause has gained a strong foothold in Oregon. Men will eventually give us the franchise, but meanwhile they like to be coaxed a little. We don’t say yes right away when they ask us to marry them. We like to be coaxed a little, too.” NOTES The Federation district meeting was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, November 13, 1905. Apparently, Clampett rebuked the women both before and after: “from the pulpit” on Sunday, the 12th and, again, before the Episcopal Convocation of San Francisco, meeting in Grace Church, on Tuesday, the 14th (San Francisco Examiner 18 Nov. 1905; San Francisco Chronicle 15 Nov. 1905). The San Francisco Chronicle published Clampett’s remarks on the front page on November 15, in a story entitled “New Woman Rebuked,” which also quotes several dissenting fellow clergy. The Chronicle also reported reactions of several members of the Forum Club in “The Ladies and the Cleric” on November 16. San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 1905. 18 Nov. 1905. Accounts of this address also reached Oregon. In a very similar story, containing nearly identical excerpts, the following week, the Portland Evening Telegram reported that “one of the best-known society and clubwomen of Portland” (a description that surely pleased and amused Abigail) had risen to answer the charge that clubs “are destructive of domesticity and the social structure generally” (22 Nov. 1905). Abigail also spent at least the following week in San Francisco as the guest of Mary A. Wells. That Monday (November 20), she addressed the Susan B. Anthony Club in celebration of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birthday; that Friday (November 24), the Business Woman’s League gave a reception at Clara Shortridge Foltz’s home (San Francisco Examiner 18 Nov. 1905; San Francisco Chronicle 26 Nov. 1905). (1849-1934): California’s first woman lawyer, 1878; president, California Woman Suffrage Association, early 1880s; publisher, New American Woman, 1916-18; advocate for penal reform and public defenders for poor; first woman deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, 1911-13; declined appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921; candidate in 1930 Republican gubernatorial primary, running on equal rights platform. Mistreated by her spouse and needing money for her children, young Mrs. Foltz sewed for Scott Duniway’s millinery store and wrote for New Northwest before moving to California in 1875 (Gilb, “Foltz”; Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 96). William Osler (1849-1919): “the most influential doctor of his age”; born Tecumseh, Ontario, Canada; Trinity College, Toronto, 1868; M.D., McGill University, 1872; further education University College, London, and Universities of Berlin and Vienna, 1872-74; professor of medicine, McGill, 1874-84, University of Pennsylvania, 1884-89, Johns Hopkins University, 1889-1905 (also physician-in-chief, Johns Hopkins Hospital), Oxford University, 1905–; author, definitive studies of many ailments including cerebral palsies, angina pectoris, and cancer; especially known for Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1912; Baronet of the United Kingdom, 1911 (“Robert Fulford’s column about William Osler“; Who was Who 922). Osler possessed a mischievous sense of humor. For years he wrote letters to medical journals, under the pseudonym Egerton Yorrick Davis, reporting fictitious case histories of bizarre sexual maladies. Scott Duniway’s reference is to his farewell address at Johns Hopkins earlier in 1905, in which the good doctor suggested that all important advances were made by those under 40 and that those reaching 60 should be chloroformed. Osler insisted that his remarks were not meant literally, but the newspapers fomented a minor scandal and, for a time, “oslerize” became a synonym for “euthanize” (“Dr. Egerton Yorrick Davis“; Oakland Tribune 23 Feb. 1905; “Robert Fulford’s column about William Osler“). Abigail, now 71, had been widowed nearly a decade before, on August 4, 1896.
LEWIS AND CLARK EXPOSITION – October 6, 1905
The centennial of the Expedition of Discovery, the first to reach the Oregon Territory by land, demanded a celebration. With the heavy financial backing of a consortium of twenty-five Portland businessmen, a fair was held in the Guild’s Lake district of Portland, where three Federal and twenty Oregon state buildings, and buildings and exhibits representing […]
The centennial of the Expedition of Discovery, the first to reach the Oregon Territory by land, demanded a celebration. With the heavy financial backing of a consortium of twenty-five Portland businessmen, a fair was held in the Guild’s Lake district of Portland, where three Federal and twenty Oregon state buildings, and buildings and exhibits representing sixteen other states and sixteen foreign countries, were on display. The cornerstone had been laid by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Opening on June 1, 1905, the Exposition attracted over 2.5 million visitors during its eighteen week run.1 The fair honored a number of pioneers. October 6 was Abigail Scott Duniway Day. She was the only woman to be so recognized, and her selection prompted the Woman’s Tribune to observe: “In choosing Mrs. Duniway as the representative of her sex, it is not presumption to claim that it was the intention of the Exposition management to declare itself in favor of equal rights for the women of Oregon, for this is what Mrs. Duniway’s life and work stand for”2 Ceremonies were conducted in the Oregon Building on the fairgrounds in Portland, “thronged to [its] utmost capacity.” While De Caprio’s band “beguiled” those present, Abigail met guests in a receiving line that included Dr. Viola M. Coe<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_3_87" id="identifier_3_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; four children; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; removed to Oregon, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting president, O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608).">3, president of the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association, Sally N. Chamberlain<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_4_87" id="identifier_4_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sally Newman Welch Chamberlain: born near Natchez, Louisiana, descended from New England stock; graduate, Natchez Institute; member, Calvary Presbyterian Church and Order of the Eastern Star (woman’s auxiliary of Freemasons); married George Earle Chamberlain, prominent Oregon politician and lawyer, May 21, 1879; seven children (Gaston, Portland 3: 207; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 38; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 38-41).">4, first lady of the state, and many members of her family, from siblings to grandchildren and including brother Harvey.5 In introduction, President Jefferson Myers<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_6_87" id="identifier_6_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1863-1943): Democratic political leader; born Scio, Oregon; Willamette University; state representative, 1889; state senator, 1891-93; Salem attorney, 1894-1901; chair, state commission of Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1902-05; husband of Annice F. Jeffrey Myers, Scott Duniway’s personal physician; following her death, 1910, married Helene P. Rowe, 1913; state treasurer, 1924-25; U.S. shipping board, 1926-38 (Corning 173; Who’s Who in Oregon 158).">6 of the State Commission called Scott Duniway “one of the greatest living pioneers of this state,” whose name “is known to every man, woman and child in the Northwest Territory.” Myers then endorsed her cause, saying: “The principles advocated by this pioneer are just; they are right. She is asking that brains, independence, honor and industry should share equally under a just and considerate government.” Thus, it may well be that Scott Duniway never spoke, before or after, to a friendlier, more receptive audience. Her address is vintage Abigail, and wholly epideictic in character; she praises the pioneer spirit of the men of Oregon and asks for their “chivalrous” support of the equal suffrage referendum of June, 1906. Yet, at the same time that her life was celebrated at the Exposition, her suffrage work was sorely challenged. The N.A.W.S.A. convention, with Anna Howard Shaw as President, had come four months earlier, at her urging.<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_7_87" id="identifier_7_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="June 28-July 5, 1905, in the First Congregational Church. Never before had the convention ventured further west than Des Moines, Iowa (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 117, 119). Mss 1534, folder “Politics and Miscellaneous–Political Groups and Issues-Women,” OR Hist. Soc., contains the official convention program, which reprints Scott Duniway’s “Centennial Ode,” celebratory verse penned for the occasion of the Exposition, and advertises her novel, From the West to the West. Leslie Roberts says that N.A.W.S.A. was invited because, after 1900’s close defeat, Scott Duniway expected victory in 1906, was getting old, and wanted to retire in glory (169-71).">7 But it had not entirely gone: Workers from the National remained in Oregon following the convention to direct the coming campaign and, eventually, Scott Duniway would resign the presidency of O.S.E.S.A. in angry protest.<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_8_87" id="identifier_8_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The convention itself seemed to deliver on her hopes. At the time, Abigail called it a “love feast” at which she and Anthony were “recognized as its stars.” She wrote to her son: “Our meetings are fine. I am sharing all the honors with Aunt Susan. . . . Anna Shaw’s . . . annual [address] was never excelled by any paper of President or Senator, and never excelled by them in Soul” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 13 July 1905 and 2 July 1905, respectively, qtd. in L. Roberts 174). But longstanding antagonisms, held in check during the convention, erupted again when some officers simply remained in Oregon afterward and still others returned the following spring, motivated by Anthony’s deathbed plea for victory. In Abigail’s version, these officers “held a supposedly secret enclave with a few of my ambitious eleventh-hour opponents and decided to ‘take the Duniway bull by the horns.’ But their secret ‘leaked,’ and the ‘bull,’ hoping that by some unforeseen hocus-pocus we might ‘loop the loop’ and win anyhow, retreated to the rear of their procession and carried their banner on the tips of her little horns” (Path Breaking 227). Moynihan claims that things were so bad at the convention that Scott Duniway was deliberately snubbed in the proceedings, omitted from the program, and, when denied permission to read her “Centennial Ode,” contrived to storm the podium and present it anyway (Rebel 211). This “tempest,” however, had occurred at the opening of the Exposition, about three weeks earlier (cf. L. Roberts 171-73). At the convention’s opening session, on June 29, Abigail’s “Ode” was read “in a masterly manner” by Mrs. Sylvia W. McGuire. It is true that Abigail did not deliver a major address at the convention, although she gave a welcome on behalf of “the Pioneers of the Pacific Northwest” that Thursday evening: “Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s talk will be remembered as one of the best of the session. She said she had been electrified by the Governor’s [George E. Chamberlain] speech and her own fairly scintillated with the result of the shock. Her anecdotes were good and her reminiscences of the cabbage and rotten-egg days convulsed the house” (Morning Oregonian 30 June 1905). She also gave an “interesting account” of the New Northwest later in the convention and spoke at the unveiling of the Sacagawea statue at the Exposition on July 6, which conventioneers attended (“The Pioneer Mother” n. 4; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 221; History of Woman Suffrage 5: 120, 123, 132-33).">8 Both the Oregonian and the Woman’s Tribune reported on the event and published versions of both Myers’ and Scott Duniway’s speeches.<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_9_87" id="identifier_9_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Both articles appear in Scrapbook #1 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The Woman’s Tribune’s complimentary coverage masked deep-seated enmity between Scott Duniway and its publisher, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby. Bewick Colby was a “free lancer” who held no national office but whose newspaper, which she began publishing in Nebraska in 1883 and which had become the official organ of N.W.S.A., helped cast her as a movement leader (Jerry, “Woman’s Tribune”). She also was a die-hard prohibitionist whom Scott Duniway had singled out (in “Ballots and Bullets”) as one of the “self-imported Eastern Suffragists” responsible for the Washington defeat of 1888. When Bewick Colby moved the Woman’s Tribune to Portland in 1904, Abigail confided to son Clyde, “I consider her coming into Oregon with her paper at this crisis a heinous crime” (A. Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 2 Oct. 1904). Three months after the disastrous 1906 defeat, she wrote to Shaw, complaining: “Haven’t you some place on earth to put the old tramp where there is no campaign pending?” (A. Duniway to Anna Howard Shaw, 18 Sept. 1906, qtd. in L. Roberts 185). Following the defeat, Bewick Colby would attempt to oust Scott Duniway from O.S.E.S.A. leadership (Moynihan, Rebel 210-11). Time did not heal these wounds. Years later, in Path Breaking, Scott Duniway would lash out again, writing that the National officers “were ably assisted” in “side-tracking” the campaign by Bewick Colby, “whose eccentric orbit carries her, unheralded, into every locality on two continents, where other people have brought victory into tentative prominence, though she never remains long enough at a time, in any one place, to accomplish any purpose to which she aspires” (225). Besides their disagreements over prohibition and strategy, Bewick Colby no doubt rubbed Abigail the wrong way in other respects. Bewick Colby was British-born. She, too, was a journalist, and a more prominent one at that, at least in Eastern circles. She had the cheek to imagine her newspaper as successor to the short-lived Western Woman’s Journal, and herself as spokesperson for western, rural women (Steiner, “Evolving” 193). And she was equally strong-willed. As Jerry puts it: “Throughout her professional life, Bewick Colby simply and repeatedly refused to adapt; her activity was to be all on her own terms or not at all” (“Woman’s Tribune” 128).">9 I follow the somewhat more complete Oregonian version, of October 7, which itself claimed to be reporting her remarks only “in part.” Material absent from the Woman’s Tribune version, of October 28, appears in “//”; material absent from the Oregonian version appears in “[]”. To say in cold words that I feel deeply moved /in making this response to the first invitation to accept the honors of a special day ever yet accorded by the official management of any international exposition to any living woman, not a potentate,/ but feebly expresses my emotion /and gratitude/. /And,/ in accepting this testimonial to the /humble and/ earnest efforts I have made during the past three and a half decades on behalf of the women of old Oregon, whose organization[s] along the lines of progress are now numbered by scores, I realize anew the fitness of our decision that this testimonial, ostensibly in my behalf, belongs of right to all women–yes, and all men (for we will never forget our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons)–without whose assistance and co-operation nothing of which I have had the honor to be a forerunner could possibly have been accomplished. Forty years ago there was not, to my knowledge (outside of a few women’s auxiliaries to various benevolent and secret societies, for most of which the women would prepare annual banquets and then retire to an anteroom while the products of their culinary skill were being eaten and the remains of the feast presided over post-prandially while the said auxiliaries washed the dishes10 ), any organization[s] consisting primarily of women in any part of /this/ Oregon /domain/. While I do not wish to be understood as /entirely/ favoring any organization composed of men alone, or of women alone, whether it be a prayer meeting or a National Government, a rummage sale or an international exposition, I do wish to emphasize the fact that women’s organizations today are equal in numbers, if not per capita (they certainly are not in financial power), to the organizations of men. And, although most of these associations of women–all, indeed, except the Equal Suffrage Association, the original Alma Mater of them all, have combined to further different lines of effort in which the enfranchisement of their sex was expected to have no part, /you can all judge that/ it is exceedingly gratifying to me to emphasize the fact that today they are all combined, as with the voice of one, in a womanly and honorable demand that the men by a large majority shall be moved to hearken to their plea that the locked doors of state constitutions shall be opened wide, permitting them to enter or not, as they themselves shall from time to time elect, to share equally with the aforesaid fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, the duties, responsibilities and emoluments of a free, untrammeled citizenship. I need not remind you that Idaho, youngest daughter of old Oregon, is represented here today by her radiant daughters, who are already crowned with the insignia of Liberty, which we are looking expectantly to you, men and brethren of the mother state, to bestow upon us at the state election in the coming June.11 Not only are the women of Oregon appealing to you to grant us this boon, but the women of the entire Nation, by many tens of thousands strong, are joining us in the appeal, all of whom are looking expectantly to the broad-brained, big-hearted men of this mighty state, in the midst of whose splendid achievements we are so proudly standing in these enchanted grounds today by your gracious invitation, to arise in the majesty of your patriotism and chivalry and swing wide the doors to our joint inheritance, leaving us to choose, of our own free will, whether or not we will accept the opportunities which have already been extended by men to our sisters, not only in Idaho, but in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.12 Never again can any man truthfully say to us that he withholds the right of citizenship from us because we do not ask for it. The women of the state in their different organizations and auxiliaries have already appealed13 to you by many thousands, representing a greater majority than any set of men who have yet voted us down, to swing open the doors, to span the chasm that now separates us in the bridge of liberty; and, as I again repeat, leave the choice to us at every coming election as to whether or not we are willing to embrace our opportunities. The women, not only of the four states of our Union just mentioned, but of many foreign countries are already in possession of the elective franchise. Australia is watching you, the men of Oregon, from her ocean-gird[l]ed shores, where women enjoy, equally with their brothers, the full endowment of citizenship. It is a far cry from Australia and New Zealand to America, and /a/ still farther cry to India. But even in India the women of the zenanas are watching the outcome of the pending battle of ballots in this historic state of Oregon. The /more enlightened women of the Hawaiian/ Isles and the Philippines and Japan are also watching and waiting for the glad tidings of citizenship that await the women of Oregon, when the present electors shall have arisen in their might and declared through the still small voice of the ballot that their wives and mothers are, and of right ought to be, free and equal with themselves before the law. I believe, as I address the honorable gentlemen, the official managers of this great international Exposition, by whose courtesy we are here assembled, that through your heroic, manly and chivalrous action at the ballot-box next June, you will, in extending to Oregon’s pioneer women the right of suffrage, lay the foundation for an exposition on these grounds one hundred years from now in which your deeds of moral chivalry and patriotic valor shall eclipse in spiritual power and enlightened importance the mighty exploits of Thomas Jefferson<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_14_87" id="identifier_14_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1743-1826): statesman, diplomat, author, scientist, architect; born Albemarle County, Virginia; member, House of Burgesses, 1769-75; strongly anti-British; Continental Congress, 1775; member, committee of four that drafted Declaration of Independence; Virginia House of Delegates, 1776-79; governor, 1779-81; U.S. minister to France, 1785-89; first Secretary of State 1789-93; second Vice-President, 1797-1801; third President, 1801-09; approved Louisiana Purchase, 1803, and underwrote Lewis and Clark Expedition.">14, Lewis<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_15_87" id="identifier_15_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146).">15 and Clark<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_16_87" id="identifier_16_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55).">16, Sacajawea<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_17_87" id="identifier_17_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15).">17, Dr. John McLoughlin<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_18_87" id="identifier_18_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1784-1857): “Father of Oregon”; chief factor of Hudson’s Bay Co. in Columbia River District, 1824-46, charged with monopolizing fur trade, pacifying tribes, and preventing agricultural settlement; when pioneer settlement overwhelmed his empire in 1840s, retired to Oregon City to run a store; both admired and hated; became U.S. citizen, 1849 (Corning 162; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1075-76).">18 and the founders of the Provisional Government<a href="https://asduniway.org/lewis-and-clark-exposition-october-6-1905/#footnote_19_87" id="identifier_19_87" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Creation of the Provisional Government followed a series of so-called “wolf meetings” (ostensibly to discuss measures to eradicate predators) by settlers in the Willamette Valley, beginning on February 17, 1841, and culminating in the famous Champoeg Meeting of May 2, 1843, where, by 52-50 vote, a decision to form a civil community was endorsed; subsequently, officers were elected, a legislative committee was appointed to draft Organic Laws, five other committees (ways and means, judiciary, military, districting, and land claims) were formed, and four districts (Champooick, Twality, Clackamas and Yamhill) were created (Corning 206).">19, all of whom have had their days in this great international Exposition, all of which have foreshadowed this historic day in honor of the pioneer women of old Oregon, of whom your humble, but pleased and happy respondent, is but one. NOTES Corning 147; see also Abbott. 28 Oct. 1905 Viola May Boley Coe: M.D.; born Bourbon, Indiana; married Henry Waldo Coe (1857-1927), also prominent physician of mental and nervous diseases, in North Dakota, 1882; four children; graduate, Woman’s Medical College of Chicago, 1890; removed to Oregon, 1890; began practice in Portland, 1891; founded Mindsease Hospital, Portland, 1897, Mt. Tabor Sanitarium, 1900, Coe Hospital and maternity home, Portland, 1910; helped organize Home for Unemployed Women Without Means; president (or acting president, O.S.W.S.A., 1905-12; delegate, International Woman’s Convention, Budapest, 1913; divorced, 1914 (Moynihan, Rebel 214; Who’s Who in Oregon 58; cf. Hines 608). Sally Newman Welch Chamberlain: born near Natchez, Louisiana, descended from New England stock; graduate, Natchez Institute; member, Calvary Presbyterian Church and Order of the Eastern Star (woman’s auxiliary of Freemasons); married George Earle Chamberlain, prominent Oregon politician and lawyer, May 21, 1879; seven children (Gaston, Portland 3: 207; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 38; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 38-41). Indeed, Moynihan argues that Scott Duniway owed the very fact of her honorary day to Harvey, who was president of the Exposition, and says that the two had “made up” during her life-threatening illness in 1903 (Rebel 210). (1863-1943): Democratic political leader; born Scio, Oregon; Willamette University; state representative, 1889; state senator, 1891-93; Salem attorney, 1894-1901; chair, state commission of Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1902-05; husband of Annice F. Jeffrey Myers, Scott Duniway’s personal physician; following her death, 1910, married Helene P. Rowe, 1913; state treasurer, 1924-25; U.S. shipping board, 1926-38 (Corning 173; Who’s Who in Oregon 158). June 28-July 5, 1905, in the First Congregational Church. Never before had the convention ventured further west than Des Moines, Iowa (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 117, 119). Mss 1534, folder “Politics and Miscellaneous–Political Groups and Issues-Women,” OR Hist. Soc., contains the official convention program, which reprints Scott Duniway’s “Centennial Ode,” celebratory verse penned for the occasion of the Exposition, and advertises her novel, From the West to the West. Leslie Roberts says that N.A.W.S.A. was invited because, after 1900’s close defeat, Scott Duniway expected victory in 1906, was getting old, and wanted to retire in glory (169-71). The convention itself seemed to deliver on her hopes. At the time, Abigail called it a “love feast” at which she and Anthony were “recognized as its stars.” She wrote to her son: “Our meetings are fine. I am sharing all the honors with Aunt Susan. . . . Anna Shaw’s . . . annual [address] was never excelled by any paper of President or Senator, and never excelled by them in Soul” (Scott Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 13 July 1905 and 2 July 1905, respectively, qtd. in L. Roberts 174). But longstanding antagonisms, held in check during the convention, erupted again when some officers simply remained in Oregon afterward and still others returned the following spring, motivated by Anthony’s deathbed plea for victory. In Abigail’s version, these officers “held a supposedly secret enclave with a few of my ambitious eleventh-hour opponents and decided to ‘take the Duniway bull by the horns.’ But their secret ‘leaked,’ and the ‘bull,’ hoping that by some unforeseen hocus-pocus we might ‘loop the loop’ and win anyhow, retreated to the rear of their procession and carried their banner on the tips of her little horns” (Path Breaking 227). Moynihan claims that things were so bad at the convention that Scott Duniway was deliberately snubbed in the proceedings, omitted from the program, and, when denied permission to read her “Centennial Ode,” contrived to storm the podium and present it anyway (Rebel 211). This “tempest,” however, had occurred at the opening of the Exposition, about three weeks earlier (cf. L. Roberts 171-73). At the convention’s opening session, on June 29, Abigail’s “Ode” was read “in a masterly manner” by Mrs. Sylvia W. McGuire. It is true that Abigail did not deliver a major address at the convention, although she gave a welcome on behalf of “the Pioneers of the Pacific Northwest” that Thursday evening: “Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway’s talk will be remembered as one of the best of the session. She said she had been electrified by the Governor’s [George E. Chamberlain] speech and her own fairly scintillated with the result of the shock. Her anecdotes were good and her reminiscences of the cabbage and rotten-egg days convulsed the house” (Morning Oregonian 30 June 1905). She also gave an “interesting account” of the New Northwest later in the convention and spoke at the unveiling of the Sacagawea statue at the Exposition on July 6, which conventioneers attended (“The Pioneer Mother” n. 4; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 221; History of Woman Suffrage 5: 120, 123, 132-33). Both articles appear in Scrapbook #1 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The Woman’s Tribune’s complimentary coverage masked deep-seated enmity between Scott Duniway and its publisher, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby. Bewick Colby was a “free lancer” who held no national office but whose newspaper, which she began publishing in Nebraska in 1883 and which had become the official organ of N.W.S.A., helped cast her as a movement leader (Jerry, “Woman’s Tribune”). She also was a die-hard prohibitionist whom Scott Duniway had singled out (in “Ballots and Bullets”) as one of the “self-imported Eastern Suffragists” responsible for the Washington defeat of 1888. When Bewick Colby moved the Woman’s Tribune to Portland in 1904, Abigail confided to son Clyde, “I consider her coming into Oregon with her paper at this crisis a heinous crime” (A. Duniway to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 2 Oct. 1904). Three months after the disastrous 1906 defeat, she wrote to Shaw, complaining: “Haven’t you some place on earth to put the old tramp where there is no campaign pending?” (A. Duniway to Anna Howard Shaw, 18 Sept. 1906, qtd. in L. Roberts 185). Following the defeat, Bewick Colby would attempt to oust Scott Duniway from O.S.E.S.A. leadership (Moynihan, Rebel 210-11). Time did not heal these wounds. Years later, in Path Breaking, Scott Duniway would lash out again, writing that the National officers “were ably assisted” in “side-tracking” the campaign by Bewick Colby, “whose eccentric orbit carries her, unheralded, into every locality on two continents, where other people have brought victory into tentative prominence, though she never remains long enough at a time, in any one place, to accomplish any purpose to which she aspires” (225). Besides their disagreements over prohibition and strategy, Bewick Colby no doubt rubbed Abigail the wrong way in other respects. Bewick Colby was British-born. She, too, was a journalist, and a more prominent one at that, at least in Eastern circles. She had the cheek to imagine her newspaper as successor to the short-lived Western Woman’s Journal, and herself as spokesperson for western, rural women (Steiner, “Evolving” 193). And she was equally strong-willed. As Jerry puts it: “Throughout her professional life, Bewick Colby simply and repeatedly refused to adapt; her activity was to be all on her own terms or not at all” (“Woman’s Tribune” 128). Cf. Scott Duniway’s comments on the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs in “A Pioneer Incident.” Women were enfranchised in Idaho in 1896. Women were enfranchised in Wyoming and Utah in 1870, and in Colorado in 1893. WT, in error: “appeared” (1743-1826): statesman, diplomat, author, scientist, architect; born Albemarle County, Virginia; member, House of Burgesses, 1769-75; strongly anti-British; Continental Congress, 1775; member, committee of four that drafted Declaration of Independence; Virginia House of Delegates, 1776-79; governor, 1779-81; U.S. minister to France, 1785-89; first Secretary of State 1789-93; second Vice-President, 1797-1801; third President, 1801-09; approved Louisiana Purchase, 1803, and underwrote Lewis and Clark Expedition. Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146). William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55). Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15). (1784-1857): “Father of Oregon”; chief factor of Hudson’s Bay Co. in Columbia River District, 1824-46, charged with monopolizing fur trade, pacifying tribes, and preventing agricultural settlement; when pioneer settlement overwhelmed his empire in 1840s, retired to Oregon City to run a store; both admired and hated; became U.S. citizen, 1849 (Corning 162; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1075-76). Creation of the Provisional Government followed a series of so-called “wolf meetings” (ostensibly to discuss measures to eradicate predators) by settlers in the Willamette Valley, beginning on February 17, 1841, and culminating in the famous Champoeg Meeting of May 2, 1843, where, by 52-50 vote, a decision to form a civil community was endorsed; subsequently, officers were elected, a legislative committee was appointed to draft Organic Laws, five other committees (ways and means, judiciary, military, districting, and land claims) were formed, and four districts (Champooick, Twality, Clackamas and Yamhill) were created (Corning 206).
Nineteenth-century women seeking to justify a larger role in public life often looked to exceptional historical women as models. Scott Duniway, for example, fondly invoked Abigail Adams, for whom she was named. At the turn of the next century, an obscure native woman known to Lewis and Clark would become the most important heroine in […]
Nineteenth-century women seeking to justify a larger role in public life often looked to exceptional historical women as models. Scott Duniway, for example, fondly invoked Abigail Adams, for whom she was named. At the turn of the next century, an obscure native woman known to Lewis and Clark would become the most important heroine in the cause of woman’s rights. Although Sacagawea had her admirers as early as 1893, the legend of the Shoshone maiden who, baby on her back, guided the Corps of Discovery through the wilderness was popularized by Eva Emery Dye’s historical novel, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark, in 1902. In fact, it has been suggested that Dye, a writer of some repute who happened to be Clackamas County chair of the O.S.E.S.A., manufactured the now-familiar Sacagawea myth for suffrage ends in the wake of the defeat of 1900.1 While this probably exaggerates Dye’s intentions, just as the myth exaggerates Sacagawea’s importance to the Corps of Discovery, it is undeniable that suffragists quickly appropriated the Shoshone woman as a forebear: Sacagawea soon became closely associated with the movement, both in Oregon and nationally. Certainly Dye’s close friend, Abigail Scott Duniway, was quick to seize on the new strategy. She happened to be president of the Portland Woman’s Club when it created the Sacajawea Statue Association (with Dye at the helm) for the purpose of securing a statue of Sacagawea for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.2 A Denver sculptress, Alice Cooper, was commissioned to execute a bronze for $7,000, and funds were raised across the nation. While planning for the Centennial was underway, the legislature passed an equal-suffrage measure to be submitted to voters the following year, and the president of the Exposition invited N.A.W.S.A. to hold its annual convention in Portland. Thus, the summer of 1905 witnessed a remarkable confluence of events. The Exposition opened on June 1, and the women’s convention was gaveled to order on June 28. Sacagawea figured quickly and prominently in both. In her presidential address to the assembled suffragists, Anna Howard Shaw praised the native woman’s character and achievements, while July 6–the day following the convention’s conclusion–was Sacajawea Day at the Exposition. This also was two days after Independence Day, and “patriotic” was the operative word. Noting “a thrill of patriotic emotion for all thoughtful spectators,” the newspapers vividly reported the scene: It was in a large sense woman’s day, and with swelling pride in the significance of the occasion–the celebration of a woman’s historic achievements–representatives of a great national woman’s organization, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Blackwell, Anna Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, Abigail Scott Duniway and others of nationwide repute, with many members of the Sacajawea Monument association and also hundreds of members of the Improved Order of Red Men were in a parade that moved through the streets and was witnessed by countless thousands of people who lined every sidewalk along the line of march.3 Then the “tremendous throng” assembled on Lakeview terrace on the exposition grounds to witness the unveiling of the statue of the “Bird Woman.” Following “patriotic airs” offered by De Caprio’s band, an invocation by Shaw, President H. W. Goode’s address of welcome, a “patriotic song” delivered “with fine effect” by Charles Cutter, an Alaska native, and the “address of the day” by Anthony, Scott Duniway delivered the following.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_4_85" id="identifier_4_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A brief account in the History of Woman Suffrage mistakenly attributes these events to Woman’s Day at the Exposition, on June 30 (5: 132-33). Scott Duniway also invoked Sacagawea in the second verse of her “Centennial Ode,” penned for the Exposition: “And then, to make the prophecy complete, An Indian Mother led the devious way, Foreshadowing woman’s place, which man shall greet Without a protest in a hastening day, When Womanhood, benignant, wise and free, Shall lead him to yet greater heights of strength and victory.”">4 The Oregon Daily Journal and Portland Evening Telegram carried Abigail’s remarks “in part” that evening (July 6, 1905); the Oregonian followed suit the next morning (July 7). I have followed a more complete manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers, which adds three concluding paragraphs.5 It is scarcely probable that the pioneer mother who trudged across the almost untracked continent with her babe in arms and other little children clinging to her gown, in the days when the nineteenth century was young, ever gave a passing thought to her own heroism, much less to that of the Indian woman of the earlier years of the same century, who, like herself, was building better than she knew. Nor when the long and arduous journey was over, and she found herself and children alone in the border cabin of the Oregon wildwood, while her husband was exchanging work with a neighbor, who also was hewing out a home in the wilderness, did she then realize the part she was acting in the great drama of life; for whether she was engaged in the domestic pursuits of peace or defending her rude domicile from wild beasts or wilder savages, she was equally with man a necessary factor in the great aim of human effort, out of which has culminated in this dawn of the twentieth century the splendid achievements of this historic day. Little did the pioneer mothers of Oregon imagine, still less did Sacajawea<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_6_85" id="identifier_6_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15).">6 think, the day would come when womanhood would be recognized as it is recognized today. Still less did any man imagine, 100 or even 50 years ago, that away out here, hard by the surging shores of the sundown seas, there would be erected, by women, in enduring bronze the statue of a woman whose unveiling we are here to celebrate. This woman was an Indian, a mother and a slave. And, as she pointed out the devious way in the wilderness that led at last to the home of her people, from which she had been stolen, a man-child on her back, and in her heart the protective mother instinct that was of itself sufficient to nerve her to deeds of daring in emergencies before which strong men quailed and her own husband cried like a baby, little did she know or realize that she was helping to upbuild a Pacific empire, upon whose borders the white man and the white woman would unite to perpetuate a nation (not yet born) where a government of the people and by the people is destined to supercede an aristocracy of sex. “Dux femini facti” was an ancient motto7, and ‘a woman hath inspired the deed’ is still echoed and reechoed along the moving decades, carrying woman with it till at last she stands face to face with a monument of her own creating that is destined to endure for ages. Other evidences of human handiwork in these enchanted grounds will pass away. They are not meant to be enduring. But this statue of Sacajawea, representing the past subjection of womanhood, is destined to remain as a historic reminder of a vanished era, when woman carried man on her shoulders–a feminine Atlas, upholding a world whose full significance was yet to be realized. In carrying this child, herself symbolic of liberty in bondage, Sacajawea is keeping watch and ward over the outer gates, pointing to the orient, where countless hordes of women still exist in slavery, who shall ultimately look to our enlightened men and women of this Pacific coast for the full fruition of a freedom that has dawned on us already. On the dome of the nation’s capitol stands the Goddess of Liberty, overlooking from her breezy height the home of Washington. Away out on the Atlantic’s border is a conspicuous island, placed there by God himself to guide the people of all lands through the great gateway of nations. Did you ever notice, men and brethren, that in always representing liberty as a woman you have been building better than you knew? “Liberty enlightening the world” is written in letters of fire on that eastern statue; the man-child on her back is the pioneer history of woman that is written upon this. Upon the dome of the nation’s capitol stands another figure of woman; and she, like the statue at the gates of our eastern seas, is forever posing–an emblem of the liberty that is dawning for the women of this western coast, where man, chivalrous, patriotic, wise and free, is gladly welcoming his wife and mother to their proper sphere while helping them in this statue of the historic past to perpetuate the memory of those barbarous times when woman carried man upon her back. Today we honor a new type of heroine; not a seer of visions, nor hearer of strange voices, not even a philanthropist sustained in her labors by the knowledge of her lofty mission, but she whom we now enthrone was a simple child of the unbroken forest, who, with a pure heart and mind tutored by danger and nature’s lore, endured the calamities and embraced the opportunities of her life with a calm philosophy which we all may profitably acquire. As child she met disaster with courage and hope; as wife she was faithful; as mother, she threw the protecting armour of love around her child, and worked with hand and brain for humanity. She met every demand. She did what she could cheerfully and cleverly, without hope of reward and without foreseeing results. In honoring her we pay homage to thousands of uncrowned heroines, whose quiet endurance and patient effort have made possible the achievements of the world’s great men whom they loved and served. It is this same disposition to [missing] that brought Independence and Coquille to this platform today. Independence gave to this nation this beautiful emblem of freedom and progress, what more fitting than that this flag, which Sacajawea, standing on the brow of shining Rock mountains, first waved over this great Empire of the Northwest from mountain crest to the boundless sea, waving back the dark savagery to which she was born, beckoning forward the advancing civilization to which she was wed–what more fitting than that this should perpetuate forever her memory with its lessons, to the city of Independence, whose prompt response first cheered the hearts of the unselfish women, Mrs. Sarah J. [sic] Evans<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_8_85" id="identifier_8_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215).">8 and Mrs. M. A. Dalton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_9_85" id="identifier_9_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Martha Angeline Cardwell Barnhart Dalton (1839-1913): daughter of William Lee and Mary Ann Biddle Cardwell, who crossed plains from Jacksonville, Illinois, 1852, settling in Marysville (Corvallis), then moving to Portland, 1858; married December 28, 1854, to James B. Barnhart at Corvallis; married Frank Dalton of Lewiston, Idaho Territory, July 24, 1866; music teacher; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; frequent member of library and chautauqua committees of Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs; sister of Dr. James Robert Cardwell, Portland’s first dentist; died in September (Weekly Oregonian 13 Jan. 1855; Daily Oregonian 26 July 1866; Moynihan, Rebel 84; Writer’s Project; Scrapbooks #21: 13, #44: 105, 155, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Gaston, Portland 387-92). Scott Duniway comments: “She remained a member of the Executive Committee of the State Equal Suffrage Association up to the time of her death; and, though a prohibitionist, always agreed with my efforts to hold the Suffrage Movement aloof from affiliation with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, after it got into politics” (Path Breaking 217).">9, Mrs. C. M. Cartwright<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_10_85" id="identifier_10_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright (1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Oregon Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">10 and Mrs. Breyman<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pioneer-mother%e2%80%9d-july-6-1905/#footnote_11_85" id="identifier_11_85" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Phoebe Anna Cranston Breyman: born Champaign County, Ohio; daughter of Ephraim and Rosanna Sears Cranston; came overland, 1851, taking two years and wintering in Missouri; married Arthur Henry Breyman (1840-1908; emigrated from Germany, c. 1857, merchant in Lafayette, Yamhill County, then Canyon City, then Salem; moved to cattle ranch near Prineville, c. 1872; merchant, Prineville, c. 1877; moved to Portland, 1882, opening leather goods and saddlery factory) in Salem, 1867; five children; vice-president, family leather goods concern (Gaston, Portland 3: 322-27; Cornish 882).">11 and their helpers, to whose untiring energies, entirely without compensation, Portland and this nation is indebted for this beautiful work of art, portraying not only divine motherhood but also the soul-growth resulting from larger service to mankind. NOTES See Taber. Taber calls the Statue Association “the center of equal-suffrage activity in Oregon from 1902 until 1906” (8). Oregon Daily Journal 6 July 1905. A brief account in the History of Woman Suffrage mistakenly attributes these events to Woman’s Day at the Exposition, on June 30 (5: 132-33). Scott Duniway also invoked Sacagawea in the second verse of her “Centennial Ode,” penned for the Exposition: “And then, to make the prophecy complete, An Indian Mother led the devious way, Foreshadowing woman’s place, which man shall greet Without a protest in a hastening day, When Womanhood, benignant, wise and free, Shall lead him to yet greater heights of strength and victory.” For a valuable analysis that reveals how the commemoration of Sacagawea helped “redefine traditional values and reconstitute the membership of a public community” (17), see Richards. Sacagawea (c. 1786-1812): Shoshone woman and westward companion of Lewis and Clark; probably born in present-day Idaho’s Lemhi Valley; taken captive by Hidatsa raiders when 12 or 13 and sold to French-Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau; first reference in historical record is Sgt. John Ordway’s journal, November, 1804, when Corps of Discovery was wintering in Knife River Indian villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota; some months later she, newborn son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, and husband left Knife River villages with Corps of Discovery on journey westward; interpreter; pointed out landmarks in Shoshone territory, especially Bozeman Pass route over Continental Divide; left expedition again at Knife River villages, August, 1806; probably died 1812 at Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota (Wells; Corning 214; “Sacagawea“; Mulford 8-15). In the Aeneid, Virgil says of Dido’s flight from Tyre to Carthage: “dux femina facti,” or, “a woman was leader of the expedition” (IV.335). Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215). Martha Angeline Cardwell Barnhart Dalton (1839-1913): daughter of William Lee and Mary Ann Biddle Cardwell, who crossed plains from Jacksonville, Illinois, 1852, settling in Marysville (Corvallis), then moving to Portland, 1858; married December 28, 1854, to James B. Barnhart at Corvallis; married Frank Dalton of Lewiston, Idaho Territory, July 24, 1866; music teacher; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; frequent member of library and chautauqua committees of Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs; sister of Dr. James Robert Cardwell, Portland’s first dentist; died in September (Weekly Oregonian 13 Jan. 1855; Daily Oregonian 26 July 1866; Moynihan, Rebel 84; Writer’s Project; Scrapbooks #21: 13, #44: 105, 155, OR Hist. Soc.; Oregon Federation of Woman’s Clubs Yearbooks, Mss 1511, Box 10, OR Hist. Soc.; Gaston, Portland 387-92). Scott Duniway comments: “She remained a member of the Executive Committee of the State Equal Suffrage Association up to the time of her death; and, though a prohibitionist, always agreed with my efforts to hold the Suffrage Movement aloof from affiliation with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, after it got into politics” (Path Breaking 217). Charlotte Terwilliger Moffett Cartwright (1842-1915): born Hancock County, Illinois; of Dutch descent; family removed overland to Oregon, 1845; married Walter Gray Moffett, 1860; two children; married Charles M. Cartwright, 1897; four children; resided Portland; Unitarian; chair, Women’s Auxiliary, Oregon Pioneer Association, for fifteen years; honorary president, 1912; died Gearhart (Oregon Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc.). Phoebe Anna Cranston Breyman: born Champaign County, Ohio; daughter of Ephraim and Rosanna Sears Cranston; came overland, 1851, taking two years and wintering in Missouri; married Arthur Henry Breyman (1840-1908; emigrated from Germany, c. 1857, merchant in Lafayette, Yamhill County, then Canyon City, then Salem; moved to cattle ranch near Prineville, c. 1872; merchant, Prineville, c. 1877; moved to Portland, 1882, opening leather goods and saddlery factory) in Salem, 1867; five children; vice-president, family leather goods concern (Gaston, Portland 3: 322-27; Cornish 882).
OREGON FEDERATION OF WOMEN’S CLUBS – circa May-June, 1905
Little is known about this manuscript, which was found in folder “Suffrage Correspondence 1905-1906″ in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Textual clues strongly suggest a meeting of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs in Portland, with Scott Duniway speaking as a Federation representative (in her home city, of course). If so, its probable date is […]
Little is known about this manuscript, which was found in folder “Suffrage Correspondence 1905-1906″ in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Textual clues strongly suggest a meeting of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs in Portland, with Scott Duniway speaking as a Federation representative (in her home city, of course). If so, its probable date is 1905.1 Madam President: In responding to our masterly welcome, to which we have just listened, and in appreciative acknowledgment of the honor that accrues to me, on behalf of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, I am peculiarly impressed with the deep significance of this important gathering. How vividly I recall the time, 30 years ago, when, of the many silver haired women now present, few if any imagined that the time would ever come when any other Oregon woman save only my fool-hardy self, would ever be guilty of such a supposed-to-be-unwomanly act as to assist in forming, much less to address a public assembly of this character. Still less did you imagine that the 20th Century would find you convened from all over the state, in a sort of handicapped, semi-official Legislative capacity, to consider the ways and means necessary to accomplish the betterment of humanity’s conditions, temporal, civic and economic. Thirty years ago, when many of these blooming delegates had scarcely passed their babyhood, and many others had not yet been born, your humble speaker braved the odium of public opinion and the misrepresentation of ignorance and prejudice alone, in behalf of just such work as now convenes us. But she did not dream that she would live to see her own adopted state regard it as an honor for women to appear upon any platform in any other capacity than that of singer or actress; still less did she imagine that, were such an assemblage of women possible, she would ever be chosen as one of its honored spokeswomen. But the world moves and women are moving with it. The church has learned, much to its credit and advantage, that the omniscient Author of human destiny understood His business when he endowed women with brains and tongues and the capacity and will to use them wisely, graciously and usefully. The school long ago learned that the great multitude of its most capable teachers had to be selected from the ranks of women, if the work of training immortal souls for their highest destiny were to be successfully pursued. The “co-ed,” in the greatest institutions of learning, has already taught her brother that she can carry off the highest honors in competitive examinations, and at the same time increase her capacity for usefulness in the home that awaits her, causing the home, that greatest, most important of all institutions under the sun, to keep pace with the march of her understanding, and enabling the husband of her choice (not alone, his choice, mind you) to glory in her domestic achievements in proportion as he has learned to “give her of the fruit of her hands,” and thus “let her own works praise her in the gates.” Civic Improvement leagues have learned to welcome the Club Woman to their councils as aids and inspiration in sanitation and comfort; and our own Portland, to which we are so proud to be welcomed today, is planning for our cooperation in creating in our midst a Rose City, the like of which has never been seen on this continent. Already, although Oregon is tarrying a little behind the block of great inter-mountain States directly to the East of us, and has not yet bestowed upon us our full and free enfranchisement, the State welcomes us to assist patching the more serious of its blunders; for does it not seek our aid in caring for its feeble-minded and deserted offspring which, as many men now see, are merely the outcroppings of the subjugated condition of motherhood? Women are learning, by and through this great Club Movement, the true nature of their own heretofore narrow environment. They are learning the value of personal, civil and political liberty for themselves, and in turn, are teaching men that “we will do them good and not evil all the days of our lives,” in proportion to the opportunities they do not withhold, as well as the many we take without the asking. While we believe that men are destined to receive the greatest benefit from every enlargement of our liberties and opportunities in the future, as they have been in the past, we are by no means unmindful of the benefits accruing to ourselves from this “moving to and fro in the earth,” through which we have the promise that “knowledge shall be increased.” It has been said of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century that he (I believe centuries are always called masculine) discovered woman. It can truly be said of this great Club Movement that through the aid of her own search light, turned full upon the dawn of the Twentieth Century, woman has discovered herself–a discovery more important to the race than all the others that have preceded it, since through its agency the wonderful potential possibilities of a free enlightened and spiritual motherhood is already seen, though only, as yet, “through a glass, darkly.” Already have we learned to do much to alleviate horrors of war. No longer do we drudge in sorrowing seclusion or sit in helpless inactivity when the children of our peril go forth to kill and maim each other in battle. But we have gone further. We are teaching men and Nations that ultimately wars shall cease; and then even race wars shall gradually become obsolete, for the mothers of all races will deem it best for each to maintain its own social structure and build its own vantage ground. A woman has discovered, by faithful study of the great corporate powers, as well as the limitations invested in our National charter of Federation that we have, from the beginning of this great Woman Movement been building better than we knew. A great question, out of which had risen at first a cloud no larger than a woman’s hand, seems now to have been settled for us by a Providential discovery. But my time is limited and I can only say, in closing, we are glad to be welcomed by the Women’s Clubs of Portland. Officers, delegates, members and visitors alike are glad. NOTES Notwithstanding a notation, “1906?,” not in Abigail’s hand. It seems probable that the “honor” to which she refers is her selection as honorary president of the Federation, in 1905 (Haarsager 291).
“PRESIDENTS PAST AND FUTURE” – circa Fall, 1903
Encouraged by the presence of prominent Olympia, Washington, clubwoman (and Scott Duniway’s close friend), Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart, the Portland Woman’s Club was organized on December 19, 1895. A temporary organizing committee was appointed, including as president Georgiana M. Burton Lewis, wife of Oregonian owner and paper-making industrialist Henry Lewis Pittock. However, to Jane C. […]
Encouraged by the presence of prominent Olympia, Washington, clubwoman (and Scott Duniway’s close friend), Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart, the Portland Woman’s Club was organized on December 19, 1895. A temporary organizing committee was appointed, including as president Georgiana M. Burton Lewis, wife of Oregonian owner and paper-making industrialist Henry Lewis Pittock. However, to Jane C. Jackson Card would fall the honor of serving the first full term as president of the newly-established club. With at least seventy-eight charter members, the Portland club quickly became the largest in the state, and the third to affiliate with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (in 1896). It offered departments of American literature, English literature, French, German, music, home, and education; later, departments of Shakespeare, philanthropy, library, parliamentary law, and art would form.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_1_81" id="identifier_1_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="First Annual Report; Writer’s Project; Croly 1017-18. Abigail, her daughter, Clara Belle Duniway Stearns, and daughter-in-law, Cora Parsons Duniway, were charter members (Writer’s Project). Because she was identified so closely with the suffrage cause, Abigail declined to host the initial organizational meeting at her home, or even to attend. She admitted that her relationships with antisuffragist club women, even those she considered personal friends, often remained prickly (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 213-14; “Greeting and Reminiscence”).">1 In June, 1902, much to her astonishment, Scott Duniway was elected the club’s seventh president.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_2_81" id="identifier_2_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="She “could not have been more astonished at this election than if I had been suddenly appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of King James.” Not in good health and preoccupied with suffrage work, she did not even attend the meeting until summoned, and arrived after the ballots had been counted (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 217). As she relates here, she would become even more seriously ill during her term, requiring the delegation of many duties.">2 Seemingly, this speech was to have been given early in her term, on October 11, 1902. However, events intervened, and a complete, radically revised address apparently was not actually given until the end of her term, about a year later.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_3_81" id="identifier_3_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Its folder and a notation on the script date this speech as October 11, 1902, and a second notation describes it as her “inaugural” address. In addition, paragraph six describes Jane C. Jackson Card’s ill health; indeed, Jackson Card died on October 28 after a lengthy illness. However, other internal evidence points to a much later date. Paragraphs nineteen through twenty-one describe her own life-threatening illness while traveling in California in 1903, which demanded that she relinquish her duties as president. They also indicate that the speech was given as she was “retiring,” and following the election of her successor. Further, paragraph six was stricken subsequently, and paragraph twenty-three memorializes the passing of not only Jackson Card but also Rosa Frazar Burrell (April 9, 1903), and Sarelia Griffith Grubbe Miller (June 19, 1903). Apparently, the speech took a hiatus, and drastic changes were dictated by intervening events.">3 The speech pays homage to Abigail’s predecessors and their legacy. It is a unifying, not divisive, effort, celebrating home, toleration, duty, will, womanliness, and the harmonious blending of differences. Nonetheless, an undercurrent of anything but harmony and tolerance in the Club is unmistakable; Scott Duniway’s unifying themes are intended to transcend evidently deep divisions. The text is from a combination typescript/manuscript in folder “Duniway, Abigail. Papers. MS. Address: Women’s Club 1902,” in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The script has been heavily edited by hand, including substantial deletions that signify its fitful composition. The better to reveal its history, I have reconstructed the entire text. Additions to and revisions of the typescript have been incorporated, and deletions have been retained in “<>”. During the six years of our existence as a Club, six <past> presidents have graced this Chair, each of whom has not only performed her public duties faithfully but has at the same time neglected none of those <higher> domestic obligations which it is always the aim of a good Club Woman to honor, as having their seat of usefulness within the home, which is and always must be the keystone to the arch of our highest public institutions. I suppose it is only natural that I should find myself today in a reminiscent mood. And, since some president of the future will, doubtless, write me up in her capacity of “present president,” I now proceed to my self-imposed task, pausing only to add, in the words of the poet, “That mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.”4 As I turn the search light of reminiscence through the receded years, I see the plump, comely and comfortable figure of our first president, a matronly, mild mannered, public spirited woman, wielding the gavel over an untaught, untried body of her peers, whom she controlled and led by such rare qualities of diplomacy and will as are seldom combined in one individual. How much the masterly power of Mrs. J. C. Card<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_5_81" id="identifier_5_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Jane C. Jackson Card (?-1902): daughter of Rev. Timothy Jackson and Mary Ann Rhees Jackson; sister of Col. James Jackson of Portland; great granddaughter of Benjamin Loxley, who resigned royal office of Keeper of the King’s Stores in Philadelphia during Revolutionary War, achieved rank of Colonel, and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge; charter member, Daughters of the American Revolution, Multnomah chapter, 1896; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club and first president, 1896-97; president, floral section, State Horticultural Society; organized large display of roses for National Editorial Association, forerunner of Portland Rose Festival, 1899; died October 28, 1902, after illness of several months (Gaston, Portland 2: 480; History and By-Laws of Multnomah Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Portland, OR, 1903, in folder “Societies–Daughters of the American Revolution-Multnomah Chapter, Portland,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project; Scrapbook #37: 162, OR Hist. Soc.; Morning Oregonian 30 July 1910).">5 had to do for a number of years in moulding into shape and cementing into a harmonious whole the different factors, factions and dispositions of undisciplined womanly will, brought together for the first time in a homogeneous body, some of us may never know. <Mrs. Card’s public duties were not confined to, nor did they begin with Women’s Clubs. She had fairly earned the title of “Rose Queen” through her work in the Floral Section of the Horticultural Society before she became a Club Woman; and much of the advanced position in horticulture occupied by Portland today is the direct result of her pains-taking leadership in this, the sweetest and most beautiful of all the finer arts of civilization.> Mrs. Card was the first Oregon delegate to a <great> biennial meeting of the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs,6 before which she acquitted herself in a masterly manner; and, although some of her views on fundamental questions have not been shared by the majority of her constituents, as has been proved by subsequent developments, all of us may profit by the spirit of toleration she has always shown to other people’s opinions when her own have been set aside within our ranks by a popular vote.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_7_81" id="identifier_7_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Some of these contrary opinions belonged to Abigail, whose autobiography singles Card out as “a capable and useful leader, and my personal friend, over whose prejudice against votes for women, I would sometimes rap her with good-natured raillery” (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 214).">7 <It now becomes our duty to allude with deep sorrow to the heavy hand of affliction under whose pressure this first of our beloved past presidents is suffering as I speak. Let the tender solicitude of her co-workers go out to her in this hour of tribulation; and let our united petitions ascend to Heaven in her behalf, asking for her a speedy deliverance from those bodily ailments that are today holding her in thrall as a prisoner of hope.> In our second President, Mrs. Levi Young<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_8_81" id="identifier_8_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary E. Young: charter member, Portland Women’s Club; president, 1897-98; headed department of American literature; active in Oregon Emergency Corps, organized in Portland, April, 1898, “to assist the military board in providing material comforts for the Second regiment, Oregon volunteers, and to soften the transition from civil to army life for the raw recruit”; first vice-president, state Red Cross Society, successor to Corps, September, 1898; initiated course of instruction in domestic science, University of Idaho, c. 1902 (Writer’s Project; First Annual Report; Levi Young, “History”; Levi Young, “Oregon”; M. Young).">8, we were blest with a chief magistrate of commanding presence, inflexible willpower, much parliamentary skill, and devoted attention to duty. <Of medium height, clear complexion and charming voice,> Mrs. Young led us with firm steps along the paths marked out for us by her predecessor and carved for us higher niches in many of the by-paths that were opened <for us> as the work proceeded. Mrs. Young attended the Biennial meeting of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Denver in 1898, and came back to us from that august gathering on the crest of the Rocky Mountains, an ardent Equal Suffragist <as ardent an Equal Suffragist as the Mayor of Denver9, or the Governor of Colorado himself<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_10_81" id="identifier_10_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="If at the time of Young’s trip: Alva Adams, three times Democratic governor, 1887-89, 1897-99, and 1905 (Jason Brockman, “Biography of Alva Adams“). If at the time of Scott Duniway’s remarks: James B. Orman, Democrat, 1901-03 (James O. Chipman and George Orlowski, “Biography of James B. Orman“).">10>. Idaho now claims <our second past president> Mrs. Young, she having been transferred from our midst to a high position in the University of this State; and it is pertinent to this occasion to say that she now enjoys the still higher position of an enfranchised citizen–a position which is yet to be bestowed upon the less fortunate members of the Woman’s Club of Portland, or upon any other Woman’s Club of the state of Oregon, unless she follows Mrs. Young’s example by moving into an enfranchised state within the next two years. Of all our <past> presidents none has excelled in brilliancy, wit, wisdom and womanliness, our third incumbent, Mrs. Cleveland Rockwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_11_81" id="identifier_11_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cornelia F. Rockwell (c. 1860-1922): charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; president, 1898-99; industrial committee, Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1903-05; active in philanthropy, including Children’s Home, Oregon Humane Society, and Florence Crittenton Home; husband Cleveland Rockwell (1836-1907) was a marine captain, surveyor, and painter (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1903-05; Morning Oregonian 23 Mar. 1922; Gaston, Portland 3: 368; Hines 598).">11, who was elected to the chief magistracy at a time when we had set sail upon a widening sea of divergent opinions, upon whose yeasty waves she poured the oil of harmony, <while> waving above us, <as> with one hand <of velvet, and with the other on the helm,> which she guided our rocking craft to harbor with the skill of a veteran sea captain. Mrs. Rockwell was the first woman in our Club to take a step toward the foundation of our present free library system.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_12_81" id="identifier_12_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="“Eminent Women I Have Met” also refers to this Woman’s Club project. The Morning Oregonian, which published “Eminent Women” as part of its coverage of the convention of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, also reported: “A movement was set on foot to secure an appropriation from the Legislature for free traveling libraries. The discussion of the library subject was led by Mrs. A. S. Duniway, of Portland, and Mrs. E. A. Ivanhoe, of La Grande. Mrs. S. A. Evans, of Portland; Mrs. Emily Wakeman, of Silverton, and Mrs. S. A. Lowell, of Pendleton, read papers and spoke on the subject” (2 June 1900).">12 Although to Mrs. S. A. Evans<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_13_81" id="identifier_13_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215).">13 belongs the honor of guiding the measure through the State Legislature, to Mrs. Rockwell is due the credit, as our third President, of first calling public attention to its needs. She appointed the first Library committee and has the honor of opening her parlors to its first meetings. <Mrs. Rockwell is still our leader on many a ceremonious occasion. Busy as she is in philanthropies, charities and literature, and withal, a perfect home maker, and one of the proudest of grandmothers (though she doesn’t look forty) we bow to her in matters of etiquette and adornment, well knowing that we’ll make no mistake in any of these things when obeying her mandates.> There now rises before my mental vision our fourth <past> president, Julia Bodley Comstock<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_14_81" id="identifier_14_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Julia A. Bodley Comstock (1851-1937): born Cincinnati, Ohio; daughter of Thomas J. Bodley, carpenter; came to Oregon with parents, 1872; taught at Harrison Street School; married James J. Comstock of Eugene, July 14, 1875; moved to Portland, 1885; charter member and recording secretary of group that organized Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895; president, 1899-1900; charter member and president, Portland Women’s Union; for six years, national vice-president, Unitarian Society of Boston; president, Portland Alliance of Unitarian Society and Atwood Club; Multnomah chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution (Daily Oregonian 15 July 1875; Samuel’s Portland Directory, 1875; Morning Oregonian 1 June 1900; First Annual Report; Writer’s Project; Oregonian 25 June 1937).">14, a first class presiding officer, whose impartial rulings, distinct enunciation and womanly demeanor charmed us all. <Nonassertive and yet firm, just and yet kind, she managed always to have her own way–according to her interpretation of the Constitution–whether we thought it our way or not.> Buckeye by birth and a Webfoot by adoption, Mrs. Comstock soon graduated from school ma’am to matrimony <as is the habit of the craft, and for some years made an ideal home, with her late lamented husband, J. J. Comstock, Esq., in a picturesque mountain valley in the Southern Oregon foothills, which still bears his honored name.15 In this mountain fastness, through which the Southern Pacific railway runs like a thread of illuminum16, while below it trickles a busy stream like a ribbon of liquid silver, our Julia caught inspirations from nature which she now distills for us in judicious doses from her eyrie in the Oregonian tower, where> She now wields a facile pen as associate editor of the Club Journal, a magazine of value to Club Women, which I hope you all patronize. Our next chief magistrate was <our own, inimitable> Grace Watt Ross<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_17_81" id="identifier_17_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Grace Watt Ross (1861-1929): born Yamhill County, near McMinnville; daughter of Ahio Scott Watt (1824-1909; came overland from Ohio, 1848; farmer for twenty years; in later years, became Unitarian and favored woman suffrage) and Mary Elizabeth Elder Watt (1829-1889 or 1890; came overland from Ohio, 1849; housewife); lived in Portland for thirty years; married Charles D. Ross, widowed by 1902; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club, head of parliamentary laws department, lecturer in “physical expression” (gestures), president, 1900-01; president, Portland Federation of Women’s Clubs; active in Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs and New England Musical Conservatory of Portland (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1901-02, 1903-04, 1903-05, 1912-13, 1913-14; Portland Directory, 1902; “Second Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1897-8,” Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; “Third Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 6, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Morning Oregonian 9 Dec. 1929; Oregon Daily Journal 9 Dec. 1929).">17, a Shakespearian among Shakespearians, a parliamentarian among parliamentarians. <and in everything else an originality on her own account. Strong minded as is our Grace in her own individuality, she is rightly named as to her personality; for in dress, manner, repartee, and even in sarcasm (of which she is master), she is Grace itself. Filling the Chair with dignity, ruling with decisive firmness and impartiality, always ready to back her opinions in a way of her own, or plume her fancies with the un-looked for and unexpected, this brilliant native daughter of Oregon, though not our president this year–the more’s the pity–> Mrs. Ross yet remains among us, an active member and an abiding joy. She is now the popular president of the civic federation of Women’s Clubs, the first of our <past> presidents to achieve that honor. My next and last, but by no means least in honor, is our amiable and accomplished sixth <past> president, Julia A. Marquam<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_18_81" id="identifier_18_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Julia Groner Marquam: daughter of John Groner (1832-1891; pioneer from Germany by way of Missouri and California who walked to Portland from Victoria, B.C., 1853) and Ellen McKernan (or McKerrian) Groner (pioneer from Ireland via Panama, 1853) of Scholl’s Ferry in Washington County, who married in 1862 and owned a prosperous thousand-acre farm; in 1886, married U. S. Grant Marquam (1863-1905), prominent Portland attorney specializing in land titles, and son of Philip A. Marquam, also prominent attorney, Multnomah County judge, state legislator, builder of Marquam Grand Theatre and owner of Marquam Hill residential district, and Emma Kern Marquam; lost everything including home in panic of 1893, but recovered; president, Portland Woman’s Club, 1901-02; chair, civics committee, Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1902-03 (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1903-04; Gaston, Portland 3: 539-41; Hines 899-900; Hesse; “Genealogy–Marquam Family,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">18, the youngest of our historic sextet <whose expiring incumbency was regretted by none more sincerely than myself. Mrs. Marquam modestly imagines, as do all of her predecessors, that she has achieved nothing worthy of historic mention; but the fact remains that not one of these past presidents is a proper judge in this particular case, however faultless they may be in others. While I am compelled by the time limit of our Calendar to deviate from my first intention to give a sort of biographical personal history of each of these predecessors,> I am proud to say that Mrs. Marquam is the second native daughter of Oregon to occupy the president’s chair, and when her life-work is fully written, no year of her beautiful existence will shine with more radiance than illumes the one she spent as our presiding officer. It was during her incumbency that the famous Cooking School was formed, as an integral part of our Club work, out of which has grown the Federated Association of Domestic Science, toward which the entire Pacific Northwest is now eagerly looking as one of the most important measures yet inaugurated by our Woman’s Club <since the great problem of how to feed, clothe and shelter our husbands in the best and most approved and improved sanitary ways is emphatically woman’s work, and must be done by her if successfully done at all, no matter what else she may undertake or accomplish in any other channel whatsoever.> Now, what shall I say of our future presidents? If I were gifted with the spirit of prophecy I should portray them as occupying the Chair of authority in a commodious, well-appointed Club House of our own, where every department of Club work may find a home adapted to its needs, supported by a constituency of happy, healthy, contented wives, <daughters,> mothers and grandmothers, who have solved the problem of successful home building and are ready to spend the remainder of a happy existence, not in growing old in a corner, as their mothers and grandmothers did, feeling themselves “in the way” at the fire side, but keeping their bodies young and their spirits happy and contented till their time shall come to hear the welcome call, “it is enough! come higher!” The Club President of the future will be known on her own account “in the gates, when she sitteth among the rulers of the land.” It requires no spirit of prophecy to foretell the inevitable. <Let it be our duty, as Club Women of the present, to lay aside all animosities, all personal ambitions and petty exhibitions of selfishness, forgetting in the infinite possibilities of the future the bitterness of the ills that sometimes now beset us. Thus, by keeping our spirits sweet we will be able to emulate at all times the example of the “virtuous woman” of King Solomon’s time, of whom he said, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness.”> As the retiring President of the Woman’s Club of Portland, of which I have the honor of being the seventh, <who has occupied this chair> I come before you with regret as its first Executive who has been the victim of a lingering and dangerous illness, that has seriously interfered with her duties. That I was compelled to hand over the banner of leadership to our Vice President, now, happily your President-elect19, was of course, a personal disappointment to me; but it was so much alleviated by her admirable administration of the Club’s affairs, assisted as she was by her able coadjutors, the Board of Directors, each of whom is worthy of special commendation, that I can only say to the Club, <that> My loss was your gain. My thoughts were with you daily as I lay at the point of death in a San Francisco hospital; and the cheering reports that reached me of your progress and prosperity must have acted as a tonic; for I bear in sorrowful remembrance the fate of at least two prominent men of my acquaintance, who, taken with the same malady–an abscess in the ear–about the same time that I was stricken–died under the surgery that restored my health and hearing, and unfortunately for their loved ones’ sakes, consigned them to transition.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_20_81" id="identifier_20_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="On a trip to California in 1903, to see her son, Clyde, and new daughter-in-law, Caroline Cushing, a long-lived ear infection hospitalized Abigail. A mastoidectomy was performed, she nearly died, and remained deaf in one ear (Moynihan, Rebel 210).">20 Of the little flurry in our ranks of which rumors reached me while disabled in a neighboring state, I am happy to say that nothing came of it but the opportunity it afforded our brethren, the newsgatherers of the daily press, to freshen their columns by a little fun at our expense–an experience of which I was for many years the only burden bearer. As the reports of the Club’s doings for the current year will be given in the proper place I need not enlarge upon them here. But I must speak, with love and tenderness, of our three departed members, Mrs. J. C. Card, Mrs. Rosa F. Burrell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_21_81" id="identifier_21_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Rosa (Rosetta) Frazar Burrell (1842-1903); born Massachusetts; came to Oregon, 1853; daughter of Thomas (1813-1890; Multnomah county and territorial assessor, Portland city treasurer) and Frances Ann Adams Bradford Frazar, founders of Portland Unitarian church and prominent in establishing Portland public schools; married Martin Strong Burrell (?-1885; bookkeeper, agricultural implement dealer and banker, came to Oregon from Ohio, 1856), 1862; trustee, Unitarian Society; charter member, Children’s Home, Portland Free Kindergarten Association, Women’s Union (also first president), Boys and Girls Aid Society, Oregon Humane Society; founded and almost entirely supported Frazar free reading room as memorial to parents; evidently died of complications of a nervous breakdown; her obituary says, “There is probably not another woman in Portland whose death would leave such widespread sorrow. . . it would be hard to find any philanthropic enterprise which has not known [her] sympathy and help” (Oregonian, 10 Apr. 1903, in Scrapbook #66: 68, OR Hist. Soc.; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 820-21, 856-58; “Pioneers from New England”; Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.).">21 and Mrs. R. A. Miller<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cpresidents-past-and-future%e2%80%9d-circa-july-1903/#footnote_22_81" id="identifier_22_81" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarelia Griffith Grubbe Miller (1859-1903): born Marion County; graduate, Willamette University, 1877; first marriage to Quincy A. Grubbe, 1878; after his death about nine years later, became a grade school teacher, then high school principal, and finally superintendent of Salem schools, a position she resigned in 1893 to marry Col. Robert A. Miller (attorney; state legislator; Democratic nominee for Congress, 1890; six years as Aid-de-Camp to Governor Sylvester Pennoyer; four-term president, Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association; president, Oregon Pioneer Association, 1912); they moved to Oregon City and she became a Shakespeare scholar; first president, Native Daughters of Oregon; active in Portland Woman’s Club; led Avon Club of Oregon City for four years; delegate, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Los Angeles, 1902; Eastern Star; Methodist; enthusiast of Oregon history (Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 677-79; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 174-75; Scrapbook #125: 98, OR Hist. Soc.).">22, all of whom have stepped to the beyond within the year. May the Oregon Grape, our own State flower bloom with <the> Oregon roses to their memory forever; and may it be our aim to emulate their virtues until it may be said of us at last, “It is enough; come higher.” While I much regretted my inability to brave the Oregon rains at the last moment, and so missed the annual meeting of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs at Astoria during the week, I have been a deeply interested reader of the proceedings, and am most happy to have with us the leading representatives of the meeting for whose greetings I am glad to cut my message short. NOTES First Annual Report; Writer’s Project; Croly 1017-18. Abigail, her daughter, Clara Belle Duniway Stearns, and daughter-in-law, Cora Parsons Duniway, were charter members (Writer’s Project). Because she was identified so closely with the suffrage cause, Abigail declined to host the initial organizational meeting at her home, or even to attend. She admitted that her relationships with antisuffragist club women, even those she considered personal friends, often remained prickly (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 213-14; “Greeting and Reminiscence”). She “could not have been more astonished at this election than if I had been suddenly appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of King James.” Not in good health and preoccupied with suffrage work, she did not even attend the meeting until summoned, and arrived after the ballots had been counted (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 217). As she relates here, she would become even more seriously ill during her term, requiring the delegation of many duties. Its folder and a notation on the script date this speech as October 11, 1902, and a second notation describes it as her “inaugural” address. In addition, paragraph six describes Jane C. Jackson Card’s ill health; indeed, Jackson Card died on October 28 after a lengthy illness. However, other internal evidence points to a much later date. Paragraphs nineteen through twenty-one describe her own life-threatening illness while traveling in California in 1903, which demanded that she relinquish her duties as president. They also indicate that the speech was given as she was “retiring,” and following the election of her successor. Further, paragraph six was stricken subsequently, and paragraph twenty-three memorializes the passing of not only Jackson Card but also Rosa Frazar Burrell (April 9, 1903), and Sarelia Griffith Grubbe Miller (June 19, 1903). Apparently, the speech took a hiatus, and drastic changes were dictated by intervening events. From Alexander Pope’s The Universal Prayer (1738). Jane C. Jackson Card (?-1902): daughter of Rev. Timothy Jackson and Mary Ann Rhees Jackson; sister of Col. James Jackson of Portland; great granddaughter of Benjamin Loxley, who resigned royal office of Keeper of the King’s Stores in Philadelphia during Revolutionary War, achieved rank of Colonel, and wintered with Washington at Valley Forge; charter member, Daughters of the American Revolution, Multnomah chapter, 1896; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club and first president, 1896-97; president, floral section, State Horticultural Society; organized large display of roses for National Editorial Association, forerunner of Portland Rose Festival, 1899; died October 28, 1902, after illness of several months (Gaston, Portland 2: 480; History and By-Laws of Multnomah Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, Portland, OR, 1903, in folder “Societies–Daughters of the American Revolution-Multnomah Chapter, Portland,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project; Scrapbook #37: 162, OR Hist. Soc.; Morning Oregonian 30 July 1910). May 25, 1896, in Louisville, Kentucky (First Annual Report). Some of these contrary opinions belonged to Abigail, whose autobiography singles Card out as “a capable and useful leader, and my personal friend, over whose prejudice against votes for women, I would sometimes rap her with good-natured raillery” (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 214). Mary E. Young: charter member, Portland Women’s Club; president, 1897-98; headed department of American literature; active in Oregon Emergency Corps, organized in Portland, April, 1898, “to assist the military board in providing material comforts for the Second regiment, Oregon volunteers, and to soften the transition from civil to army life for the raw recruit”; first vice-president, state Red Cross Society, successor to Corps, September, 1898; initiated course of instruction in domestic science, University of Idaho, c. 1902 (Writer’s Project; First Annual Report; Levi Young, “History”; Levi Young, “Oregon”; M. Young). If at the time of Young’s trip: Thomas S. McMurry, 1895-99. If at the time of Scott Duniway’s remarks: Robert R. Wright, 1901-04. If at the time of Young’s trip: Alva Adams, three times Democratic governor, 1887-89, 1897-99, and 1905 (Jason Brockman, “Biography of Alva Adams“). If at the time of Scott Duniway’s remarks: James B. Orman, Democrat, 1901-03 (James O. Chipman and George Orlowski, “Biography of James B. Orman“). Cornelia F. Rockwell (c. 1860-1922): charter member, Portland Woman’s Club; president, 1898-99; industrial committee, Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1903-05; active in philanthropy, including Children’s Home, Oregon Humane Society, and Florence Crittenton Home; husband Cleveland Rockwell (1836-1907) was a marine captain, surveyor, and painter (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1903-05; Morning Oregonian 23 Mar. 1922; Gaston, Portland 3: 368; Hines 598). “Eminent Women I Have Met” also refers to this Woman’s Club project. The Morning Oregonian, which published “Eminent Women” as part of its coverage of the convention of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, also reported: “A movement was set on foot to secure an appropriation from the Legislature for free traveling libraries. The discussion of the library subject was led by Mrs. A. S. Duniway, of Portland, and Mrs. E. A. Ivanhoe, of La Grande. Mrs. S. A. Evans, of Portland; Mrs. Emily Wakeman, of Silverton, and Mrs. S. A. Lowell, of Pendleton, read papers and spoke on the subject” (2 June 1900). Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (1854-1940): born Bedford, Pennsylvania; attended Lutherville College (Maryland Woman’s College); married William M. Evans, 1873; three daughters; lived in North Dakota, where collected Indian relics; moved to Oregon, 1894, settling in Oswego; co-founder, Portland Woman’s Club, 1895; president, 1903-04; co-founder, Oregon State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899; president, 1905-15; chaired committee on free public libraries, 1899, and lobbied legislature for tax bill enabling same in Portland; organized financing of Sacagawea statue for Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1905; proponent of trade schools and domestic science education (founded cooking school in South Portland that led to public school curriculum), humane care for mentally ill (campaigned for certified nurses to accompany insane when transported to state hospital in Salem), child labor reform, and pure food laws; appointed Portland city market inspector, first in U.S., and policewoman, August 17, 1905 (position held until 1935); appointed state Liberty Loan coordinator by President Woodrow Wilson; an active Democrat, sought to ally Portland Woman’s Club with Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby and Anna Howard Shaw, and to undercut Scott Duniway’s suffrage leadership, after 1906 debacle (Corning 81; Downs 220-23; Gaston, Portland 2: 718-19; Oregon Lung Association; First Annual Report; Oregonian 11 Dec. 1940; Writer’s Project; Agnes Holt, “Sarah A. Evans (1854-1940),” in H. Smith, With Her Own 229-30; Moynihan, Rebel 213, 215). Julia A. Bodley Comstock (1851-1937): born Cincinnati, Ohio; daughter of Thomas J. Bodley, carpenter; came to Oregon with parents, 1872; taught at Harrison Street School; married James J. Comstock of Eugene, July 14, 1875; moved to Portland, 1885; charter member and recording secretary of group that organized Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895; president, 1899-1900; charter member and president, Portland Women’s Union; for six years, national vice-president, Unitarian Society of Boston; president, Portland Alliance of Unitarian Society and Atwood Club; Multnomah chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution (Daily Oregonian 15 July 1875; Samuel’s Portland Directory, 1875; Morning Oregonian 1 June 1900; First Annual Report; Writer’s Project; Oregonian 25 June 1937). He was a sawmill operator for whom the Comstock station on the Southern Pacific Company line in the north part of Douglas County was named (McArthur 172). aluminum Anna Grace Watt Ross (1861-1929): born Yamhill County, near McMinnville; daughter of Ahio Scott Watt (1824-1909; came overland from Ohio, 1848; farmer for twenty years; in later years, became Unitarian and favored woman suffrage) and Mary Elizabeth Elder Watt (1829-1889 or 1890; came overland from Ohio, 1849; housewife); lived in Portland for thirty years; married Charles D. Ross, widowed by 1902; charter member, Portland Woman’s Club, head of parliamentary laws department, lecturer in “physical expression” (gestures), president, 1900-01; president, Portland Federation of Women’s Clubs; active in Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs and New England Musical Conservatory of Portland (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1901-02, 1903-04, 1903-05, 1912-13, 1913-14; Portland Directory, 1902; “Second Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1897-8,” Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; “Third Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 6, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Morning Oregonian 9 Dec. 1929; Oregon Daily Journal 9 Dec. 1929). Julia Groner Marquam: daughter of John Groner (1832-1891; pioneer from Germany by way of Missouri and California who walked to Portland from Victoria, B.C., 1853) and Ellen McKernan (or McKerrian) Groner (pioneer from Ireland via Panama, 1853) of Scholl’s Ferry in Washington County, who married in 1862 and owned a prosperous thousand-acre farm; in 1886, married U. S. Grant Marquam (1863-1905), prominent Portland attorney specializing in land titles, and son of Philip A. Marquam, also prominent attorney, Multnomah County judge, state legislator, builder of Marquam Grand Theatre and owner of Marquam Hill residential district, and Emma Kern Marquam; lost everything including home in panic of 1893, but recovered; president, Portland Woman’s Club, 1901-02; chair, civics committee, Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1902-03 (Writer’s Project; Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs Yearbook, 1903-04; Gaston, Portland 3: 539-41; Hines 899-900; Hesse; “Genealogy–Marquam Family,” Vertical File, OR Hist. Soc.; Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.). Sarah Ann Shannon Evans (supra, n. 13). On a trip to California in 1903, to see her son, Clyde, and new daughter-in-law, Caroline Cushing, a long-lived ear infection hospitalized Abigail. A mastoidectomy was performed, she nearly died, and remained deaf in one ear (Moynihan, Rebel 210). Rosa (Rosetta) Frazar Burrell (1842-1903); born Massachusetts; came to Oregon, 1853; daughter of Thomas (1813-1890; Multnomah county and territorial assessor, Portland city treasurer) and Frances Ann Adams Bradford Frazar, founders of Portland Unitarian church and prominent in establishing Portland public schools; married Martin Strong Burrell (?-1885; bookkeeper, agricultural implement dealer and banker, came to Oregon from Ohio, 1856), 1862; trustee, Unitarian Society; charter member, Children’s Home, Portland Free Kindergarten Association, Women’s Union (also first president), Boys and Girls Aid Society, Oregon Humane Society; founded and almost entirely supported Frazar free reading room as memorial to parents; evidently died of complications of a nervous breakdown; her obituary says, “There is probably not another woman in Portland whose death would leave such widespread sorrow. . . it would be hard to find any philanthropic enterprise which has not known [her] sympathy and help” (Oregonian, 10 Apr. 1903, in Scrapbook #66: 68, OR Hist. Soc.; Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 820-21, 856-58; “Pioneers from New England”; Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.). Sarelia Griffith Grubbe Miller (1859-1903): born Marion County; graduate, Willamette University, 1877; first marriage to Quincy A. Grubbe, 1878; after his death about nine years later, became a grade school teacher, then high school principal, and finally superintendent of Salem schools, a position she resigned in 1893 to marry Col. Robert A. Miller (attorney; state legislator; Democratic nominee for Congress, 1890; six years as Aid-de-Camp to Governor Sylvester Pennoyer; four-term president, Willamette Valley Chautauqua Association; president, Oregon Pioneer Association, 1912); they moved to Oregon City and she became a Shakespeare scholar; first president, Native Daughters of Oregon; active in Portland Woman’s Club; led Avon Club of Oregon City for four years; delegate, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, Los Angeles, 1902; Eastern Star; Methodist; enthusiast of Oregon history (Portrait and Biographical Record of Portland 677-79; Oregon Native Son 1 (1899): 174-75; Scrapbook #125: 98, OR Hist. Soc.).
“A PIONEER INCIDENT” – December 20, 1902
Scott Duniway addressed the fourth annual meeting of the Oregon Historical Society on this Saturday at City Hall. The topic of discussion was the Constitutional Convention of 1857, and speaker after distinguished speaker arose to eulogize the framers as “men in whose veins flowed firm purpose, highmindedness and enduring sagacity.”1 Their message, sometimes implicit and […]
Scott Duniway addressed the fourth annual meeting of the Oregon Historical Society on this Saturday at City Hall. The topic of discussion was the Constitutional Convention of 1857, and speaker after distinguished speaker arose to eulogize the framers as “men in whose veins flowed firm purpose, highmindedness and enduring sagacity.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_1_79" id="identifier_1_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="These speakers included: John R. McBride (1832-1904), state legislator, Congressman, and chief justice of Idaho territory; Reuben Patrick Boise (1819-1907), justice of territorial supreme court, chief justice of state Supreme Court, and circuit judge of 3rd district; George Henry Williams (1823-1910), chief justice of territorial supreme court, U.S. Senator, U.S. Attorney General, and, at the time, mayor of Portland; Theodore Thurston Geer (1851-1924), state legislator, speaker of Oregon House, and, at the time, Governor (the first native Oregonian elected to this office); and W. D. Fenton, the newly elected vice-president of the society who chaired the proceedings. To an extent, framer after framer eulogized himself: McBride, Boise, and Williams were one-third of the surviving delegates of the constitutional convention (Sunday Oregonian 21 Dec. 1902; Corning 31, 97-98, 159, 269).">1 Their message, sometimes implicit and often explicit, was that the Constitution could not be improved upon and ought not be tampered with. Into this torrent of sentiment steps Scott Duniway to note the imperfections in this supposedly sacrosanct document and thereby to swim firmly against the tide. Following speeches that have recounted the deeds of pioneer lawmakers, she seeks to alter the record by reminding her audience of the contributions of pioneer women. She praises the pioneers of both sexes who “raise the standard of Liberty for all the people to higher planes” but protests the presence of the words “white” and “males” in the state Constitution authored by those pioneer lawmakers; she celebrates the natural splendor of the region as the inspiration for liberty but urges the use of initiative and referendum to achieve equal suffrage.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_2_79" id="identifier_2_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Primarily through the efforts of Seth Lewelling and William S. U’Ren, a constitutional amendment adopting this Populist measure first passed the Oregon legislature in 1899. Following the heartbreaking defeat of 1900, some suffragists took aim at the onerous requirements for amending the state constitution and embraced the innovation. It passed the legislature again in 1901 and, in June, 1902, voters gave the amendment a seventy-eight percent majority. The measure was so popular that every political party save the Prohibitionists endorsed it, as did the Oregonian. Oregon thereby became the third state to adopt this experiment in direct democracy. The following year, the amendment would be tested in court. The challenge “arose under a minor provision of the amendment providing that no statute could go into effect until ninety days after its passage, presumably in order to allow any dissatisfied voters enough time to organize a referendum campaign in opposition. In January 1903, the legislature passed a statute authorizing the City of Portland to assess a tax. Three weeks later, the city exercised that authority. One of the assessees, in Kadderly v. Portland [44 Ore. 118, 74 P. 710], challenged the assessment, arguing that it was made before the ninety-day waiting period had run. The city justified this allegedly ‘premature’ action on two grounds: first, that the waiting period was not meant to apply in cases of genuine emergency legislation, of which the assessment was an example; and alternatively, even if the waiting period requirement applied, that it was invalid because the entire initiative and referendum amendment was unconstitutional. Thus, the first challenge to the new amendment did not involve an initiated or referred measure, and it appeared in a posture that would have permitted the court to avoid the constitutional issue by simply accepting the city’s first argument. In fact, the court [in December, 1903] did conclude that the assessment was an emergency and therefore the ninety-day waiting period did not apply. Nonetheless, the court unnecessarily proceeded to reject the city’s second argument, announcing (after argument by such distinguished amici as U’Ren, George Williams, and Senator John Mitchell) a sweeping constitutional validation of the initiative and referendum amendment.” Abigail’s son, Ralph, an attorney, was a central character in this legal drama. A highly misleading account in History of Woman Suffrage depicts him as responsible for securing a reversal of the lower court’s ruling and thereby securing a great victory for his mother’s cause. In truth, Ralph, who was counsel for the appellants (the property owners), argued strenuously against the amendment before the court. He was quoted as saying: “If the initiative and referendum is in force, I predict that men will be shot in the streets of Portland, that a state of anarchy will exist in Oregon, and that it will be necessary to call out the Federal troops.” Whether he was expressing his own opinion or simply prosecuting his clients’ interests is not known. In either case, giving him credit for losing his case is passing strange. In 1905, U’Ren, the “father of the I. And R.,” addressed the N.A.W.S.A. convention, meeting–fittingly–in Portland, prompting the National’s endorsement. I. and R. would not affect a suffrage campaign in Oregon until 1906 (City Club of Portland, “The Initiative and Referendum in Oregon” 6; History of Woman Suffrage 5: 136, 6: 539; Morison 3: 135; Schuman 956; Abrams 1039; Moynihan, Rebel 210).">2 More than most, this address reveals the tension between epideictic and deliberative strategies. To wit: If her praise is merited, deliberation should not be necessary. Like those who preceded her, Scott Duniway praises pioneer lawmakers, even asserting that most favored equal suffrage. But then, unlike them, she must explain those offending words in the document that these lawmakers authored. She praises the land and the beliefs it inspires but then must account for the absence of liberty. Scott Duniway’s tactic for mediating this tension is typical: She invokes the theme of evolutionary progress. Thus, she can say, she is “blaming nobody” for their “failure … to remember their wives and mothers”; it was not yet woman’s hour. But this tactic is not entirely satisfactory, for at least two reasons. First, with the passage of time and a succession of failed campaigns, the prediction of progress becomes increasingly untenable. Second, unqualified praise is in fact very much qualified by an undercurrent of alienation (if this is not too strong a word), best seen in Scott Duniway’s choice of the second person when referring to the law: It is “your” Constitution, “gentlemen,” not “ours.” The text of this speech was reconstructed after the fact in a letter from Scott Duniway to Annice F. Jeffreys Myers, then Vice President at Large of O.S.E.S.A.,3 and begins: My Dear Doctor: I do not know that I can recall my impromptu ‘talk’ of yesterday, before the fourth annual meeting of the Oregon Historical Society, so as to give it exactly verbatim, but the following ‘copy’ is substantially correct; and I have no doubt that the Oregon Press will accede to your request that my presentation of the subject may follow the main address of the afternoon wherever that is published, as an act of courtesy, as well as of justice to the mothers of men.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_4_79" id="identifier_4_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Her confidence was misplaced. The Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society (Salem: Whitney, 1902) omits her. The Oregonian’s coverage the following day, which quotes the speeches by McBride, Williams, Boise, and Geer at some length, notes only (and in its closing sentence, as if an afterthought) that Abigail “spoke for a woman suffrage amendment to the constitution.” The Oregon Daily Journal, also of December 21, contains only a tiny back page story reporting that a new building for the society was discussed.">4 Cordially, Yours for Liberty, Abigail Scott Duniway The remarks, quoted from memory follow: Mr. President: I am almost as much astonished at finding myself upon my feet, addressing this Assembly as I would have been if struck by lightning.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_5_79" id="identifier_5_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway endured repeated bouts of “la grippe” (influenza) and “bilious” attacks throughout her life, which worsened as the years passed and which she attributed to overwork and other emotional and physical stresses (Moynihan, Rebel 205).">5 I remember once, many years ago (I will not say how many, but it was when I was engrossed in the labor of love that raised my sons to manhood), that I was invited to attend an Odd Fellows’ installation, a function newer and stranger to me then than the inauguration of a National President would be now.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_6_79" id="identifier_6_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Odd Fellows was a voluntary association of common laborers and assorted “odd” tradesmen, formed for the purposes of social unity, fellowship, and mutual aid. Originating in eighteenth-century England, the order as it still is known today crossed the Atlantic in 1819, with the establishment of Washington Lodge No. 1 at Baltimore, Maryland. The order spread to California in 1849, and thence to Oregon and Washington (Don R. Smith and Wayne Roberts, “The Three Link Fraternity”; Ridgeley; for some details on Oregon, H. Holmes).">6 The women in attendance on that occasion were ‘side degree members’, known to this day as ‘Rebekahs’; that is, they had been permitted to prepare a beautiful supper in an adjoining room for the men who were going through their ceremonies in an inner temple.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_7_79" id="identifier_7_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Odd Fellows became the first fraternal organization to include women with the creation of the Rebekah Degree in 1851. The degree itself was written by Schuyler Colfax, who would be Ulysses S. Grant’s Vice-President, 1869-73, and was implicated in the Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872 (“About Us“; “Rebekahs“).">7 But we were graciously permitted to attend the public installation. And when the Noble Grand came forward to address the audience, robed in a prettily embroidered silk apron, and other ornaments to match, which became him as well as if he had been a woman, there was nobody to present him; and he said, addressing himself with a Chesterfieldian bow, his hand upon his heart, ‘Noble Grand, I have the honor to introduce myself’! [‘]I trust this audience to make the necessary application, here and now. In listening to the masterly address of this afternoon, and the interesting discussion which followed, I was glad to echo every sentiment therein expressed; and I am proud to add thereto my own humble admiration of the strenuous worth, the genuine ability, the deep integrity, the lofty patriotism of the men who framed not only the State Constitution but the men who formed the Provisional Government which preceded it. The men and women who first take up their line of march across untracked continents, who settle upon the outposts of civilization and raise the standard of Liberty for all the people to higher planes, are the very best and most enterprising citizens of any land. The instinct of enlightened government is the instinct of self preservation. It is inherent in every individual and cannot rightfully be denied to anybody. While I am proud to echo every sentiment that has been uttered in praise of the men who formed the State Government of Oregon, I must, as we are making History, voice my protest, in the name of the pioneer women of Oregon, against two words, “white” and “males” that occur in the State Constitution in the article on Privileges and Elections. These words are not used in this way in the Constitution of the United States; and they ought to be null and void in the Constitution of every state. You have already outgrown the use of the word “negro” in your Constitution, and before many years you will also eliminate the word “male”. When this is done your work will be perfect, and you will have proclaimed your manly belief in the immortal words of the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence which I need not repeat. You know, gentlemen, that justice and liberty do not inhere in one sex only; that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inherent in every individual. As I listened to the roll-call of honored names affixed to the Constitution of Oregon I recalled the faces and voices of many, alas! how many! now gone to their reward, who in the early days of my untaught public stewardship assisted my trembling steps, as heeding the cry of woman in the wilderness, I sought the aid of the Legislative Assemblies in the interest of all the people; and I need not tell you that I recall with pride the important fact that a large majority of the men who framed the Constitution of Oregon were, and those of the Old Guard who remain are now, almost without exception, my aiders and abettors in the equal suffrage field, and all are good friends, staunch and true, who will rejoice in the final victory–when it comes–whether they aid in the struggle or not. Nobody was to blame, and we are blaming nobody for the failure of the framers of the Constitution to remember their wives and mothers. Everything in its order is the law of evolution, and woman’s hour had not yet come. But it is coming, men and brethren, and is almost here. The splendid vote you gave us two years ago attested this, when it came so near a majority that leading men at once discovered the necessity of so amending the Constitution that our way to liberty might be made straight.8 That way [the Initiative and Referendum] is before us now. Last winter, as I lay a victim of a lingering illness, at the point of death, I said to those around me, ‘No; I am not ready to die; my work is not yet finished. I shall live till it is done.’ The broad-brained, big-hearted men of the breezy West have expanded their ideas of liberty and justice under the shadow of our snow-capped mountains. They have quaffed inspiration from our mighty rivers when following them from their frozen sources to the ocean breakers that thunder on the Pacific beach. The march of empire has spread yet further Westward till our flag floats over the Hawaiian Islands; and the ensign of liberty is now unfurled in Oriental seas.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_9_79" id="identifier_9_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The resolution to annex Hawaii was signed in 1898; it became a territory in 1900. “Oriental seas” undoubtedly refers to the Philippines, which came under U.S. control as a result of the treaty ending the Spanish-American war in 1898. A woman of her time, Scott Duniway approved of these events. In 1905, she would publish From the West to the West (a new version of her first book, Captain Gray’s Company), “extolling manifest destiny and the civilization of Oregon” (Moynihan, Rebel 210).">9 The men whose minds expand under object lessons like these are the men who scorn to claim or accept a right for themselves which they would deny to their mothers. The fiat has gone forth: No man, or set of men, can measure metes and bounds for men, much less for women. The world moves and woman is moving with it, Mr. President; thank you, as I take my seat. Years later, Scott Duniway wrote a “Supplement to Foregoing” at the end of her letter: Long afterwards, in the year 1905, an elegant luncheon was given, in the Hotel Portland by Mrs. May Arkwright Hutton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_10_79" id="identifier_10_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary (May) Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915): illegitimate child, born in Ohio coal country; raised by father and blind grandfather; awakened to woman’s rights by discussion between father and overnight guest, young lawyer William McKinley; at 18, married Frank Day; at 22, married coal miner Gilbert Munn; came to Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho as mining camp and boardinghouse cook, 1883; married third husband, Levi W. “Al” Hutton, railroad engineer, November 17, 1887; fierce defender of organized labor during disastrous “Rocky Mountain Revolution” in mines, 1892-99; wrote, published and promoted “the true story” of labor troubles, The Coeur d’Alenes: A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, 1900; met and campaigned in Idaho with Scott Duniway, 1895; Hercules silver and lead mine, in which she bought 1/34 interest in 1897 and which began producing in 1901, made her fabulously wealthy within ten years; Democratic nominee for state legislature, 1904; joined N.A.W.S.A. and attended first national convention, in Portland, 1905; moved to Spokane, 1906, joining Susan B. Anthony and Scott Duniway in campaigning for suffrage in Washington, first working and then clashing with Emma Smith DeVoe over tactics, eventually splitting Washington Equal Suffrage Association during N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909; ardent Democrat and William Jennings Bryan supporter; first woman delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1912; noted philanthropist, especially Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, Spokane Charities Commission, and Hutton Settlement for orphaned and unwanted children. A large, uncouth woman “with a questionable past and a flamboyant nature who was anathema to many other suffragists,” she nonetheless was Scott Duniway’s “close friend and disciple.” Scott Duniway rode in the Thomas Flyer that Arkwright Hutton decorated and entered in the Portland Rose Festival, 1897, and Arkwright Hutton was an invited guest on the platform for Scott Duniway’s seventy-eighth birthday celebration, 1912 (Laura Arksey, “Hutton, May Arkwright“; Montgomery, esp. 48-49, 104-05; Roberta Cheney, “From Rags to Riches,” in Western Writers of America 220-39; Moynihan, Rebel 194-95; P. Horner; Mulford 72-79).">10 of Spokane, to our distinguished visitors from the National American Equal Suffrage Association and the local leaders of the movement in Oregon.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ca-pioneer-incident%e2%80%9d-december-20-1902/#footnote_11_79" id="identifier_11_79" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="During the N.A.W.S.A. convention, meeting June 28-July 5 in Portland (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 117-50, esp. 135). The Morning Oregonian indeed devoted one paragraph to this event of the previous evening, calling the thirty assembled “the most distinguished body of women which has ever gathered at one table in the history of Portland” (6 July 1905). However, it does not mention Abigail’s “little speech.”">11 The time tables were so completely turned on this occasion that men, by many scores, sat in silence along the walls of the hotel corridors, watching the women on their way to the feast, to which not one of them had been invited. Men (of color) were our waiters at the tables and women were the only post prandial speakers. When it came my turn to respond to a toast, my subject was ‘Our Men–God bless them,’ and I related the foregoing incident amid much merriment, concluding my remarks with words of combined condolence and encouragement for the benefit of the men in the corridors, whom I thought ought always to be invited on equal terms with us to our feast, as an introduction to the reign of peace on earth and good will to men and women which it was our business to inaugurate. Mrs. McRae, our reporter for the occasion, did me the honor to tell the readers of the Oregonian the next morning that my little speech was ‘inimitable.’ NOTES These speakers included: John R. McBride (1832-1904), state legislator, Congressman, and chief justice of Idaho territory; Reuben Patrick Boise (1819-1907), justice of territorial supreme court, chief justice of state Supreme Court, and circuit judge of 3rd district; George Henry Williams (1823-1910), chief justice of territorial supreme court, U.S. Senator, U.S. Attorney General, and, at the time, mayor of Portland; Theodore Thurston Geer (1851-1924), state legislator, speaker of Oregon House, and, at the time, Governor (the first native Oregonian elected to this office); and W. D. Fenton, the newly elected vice-president of the society who chaired the proceedings. To an extent, framer after framer eulogized himself: McBride, Boise, and Williams were one-third of the surviving delegates of the constitutional convention (Sunday Oregonian 21 Dec. 1902; Corning 31, 97-98, 159, 269). Primarily through the efforts of Seth Lewelling and William S. U’Ren, a constitutional amendment adopting this Populist measure first passed the Oregon legislature in 1899. Following the heartbreaking defeat of 1900, some suffragists took aim at the onerous requirements for amending the state constitution and embraced the innovation. It passed the legislature again in 1901 and, in June, 1902, voters gave the amendment a seventy-eight percent majority. The measure was so popular that every political party save the Prohibitionists endorsed it, as did the Oregonian. Oregon thereby became the third state to adopt this experiment in direct democracy. The following year, the amendment would be tested in court. The challenge “arose under a minor provision of the amendment providing that no statute could go into effect until ninety days after its passage, presumably in order to allow any dissatisfied voters enough time to organize a referendum campaign in opposition. In January 1903, the legislature passed a statute authorizing the City of Portland to assess a tax. Three weeks later, the city exercised that authority. One of the assessees, in Kadderly v. Portland [44 Ore. 118, 74 P. 710], challenged the assessment, arguing that it was made before the ninety-day waiting period had run. The city justified this allegedly ‘premature’ action on two grounds: first, that the waiting period was not meant to apply in cases of genuine emergency legislation, of which the assessment was an example; and alternatively, even if the waiting period requirement applied, that it was invalid because the entire initiative and referendum amendment was unconstitutional. Thus, the first challenge to the new amendment did not involve an initiated or referred measure, and it appeared in a posture that would have permitted the court to avoid the constitutional issue by simply accepting the city’s first argument. In fact, the court [in December, 1903] did conclude that the assessment was an emergency and therefore the ninety-day waiting period did not apply. Nonetheless, the court unnecessarily proceeded to reject the city’s second argument, announcing (after argument by such distinguished amici as U’Ren, George Williams, and Senator John Mitchell) a sweeping constitutional validation of the initiative and referendum amendment.” Abigail’s son, Ralph, an attorney, was a central character in this legal drama. A highly misleading account in History of Woman Suffrage depicts him as responsible for securing a reversal of the lower court’s ruling and thereby securing a great victory for his mother’s cause. In truth, Ralph, who was counsel for the appellants (the property owners), argued strenuously against the amendment before the court. He was quoted as saying: “If the initiative and referendum is in force, I predict that men will be shot in the streets of Portland, that a state of anarchy will exist in Oregon, and that it will be necessary to call out the Federal troops.” Whether he was expressing his own opinion or simply prosecuting his clients’ interests is not known. In either case, giving him credit for losing his case is passing strange. In 1905, U’Ren, the “father of the I. And R.,” addressed the N.A.W.S.A. convention, meeting–fittingly–in Portland, prompting the National’s endorsement. I. and R. would not affect a suffrage campaign in Oregon until 1906 (City Club of Portland, “The Initiative and Referendum in Oregon” 6; History of Woman Suffrage 5: 136, 6: 539; Morison 3: 135; Schuman 956; Abrams 1039; Moynihan, Rebel 210). I discovered it misfiled in folder “Duniway, Abigail S. Papers. Suffrage Correspondence 1905-1906″ in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Her confidence was misplaced. The Proceedings of the Oregon Historical Society (Salem: Whitney, 1902) omits her. The Oregonian’s coverage the following day, which quotes the speeches by McBride, Williams, Boise, and Geer at some length, notes only (and in its closing sentence, as if an afterthought) that Abigail “spoke for a woman suffrage amendment to the constitution.” The Oregon Daily Journal, also of December 21, contains only a tiny back page story reporting that a new building for the society was discussed. Scott Duniway endured repeated bouts of “la grippe” (influenza) and “bilious” attacks throughout her life, which worsened as the years passed and which she attributed to overwork and other emotional and physical stresses (Moynihan, Rebel 205). The Odd Fellows was a voluntary association of common laborers and assorted “odd” tradesmen, formed for the purposes of social unity, fellowship, and mutual aid. Originating in eighteenth-century England, the order as it still is known today crossed the Atlantic in 1819, with the establishment of Washington Lodge No. 1 at Baltimore, Maryland. The order spread to California in 1849, and thence to Oregon and Washington (Don R. Smith and Wayne Roberts, “The Three Link Fraternity”; Ridgeley; for some details on Oregon, H. Holmes). The Odd Fellows became the first fraternal organization to include women with the creation of the Rebekah Degree in 1851. The degree itself was written by Schuyler Colfax, who would be Ulysses S. Grant’s Vice-President, 1869-73, and was implicated in the Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872 (“About Us“; “Rebekahs“). The vote in 1900 was extremely close: 28,402 No to 26,265 Yes (Moynihan, Rebel 208). The resolution to annex Hawaii was signed in 1898; it became a territory in 1900. “Oriental seas” undoubtedly refers to the Philippines, which came under U.S. control as a result of the treaty ending the Spanish-American war in 1898. A woman of her time, Scott Duniway approved of these events. In 1905, she would publish From the West to the West (a new version of her first book, Captain Gray’s Company), “extolling manifest destiny and the civilization of Oregon” (Moynihan, Rebel 210). Mary (May) Arkwright Hutton (1860-1915): illegitimate child, born in Ohio coal country; raised by father and blind grandfather; awakened to woman’s rights by discussion between father and overnight guest, young lawyer William McKinley; at 18, married Frank Day; at 22, married coal miner Gilbert Munn; came to Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho as mining camp and boardinghouse cook, 1883; married third husband, Levi W. “Al” Hutton, railroad engineer, November 17, 1887; fierce defender of organized labor during disastrous “Rocky Mountain Revolution” in mines, 1892-99; wrote, published and promoted “the true story” of labor troubles, The Coeur d’Alenes: A Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho, 1900; met and campaigned in Idaho with Scott Duniway, 1895; Hercules silver and lead mine, in which she bought 1/34 interest in 1897 and which began producing in 1901, made her fabulously wealthy within ten years; Democratic nominee for state legislature, 1904; joined N.A.W.S.A. and attended first national convention, in Portland, 1905; moved to Spokane, 1906, joining Susan B. Anthony and Scott Duniway in campaigning for suffrage in Washington, first working and then clashing with Emma Smith DeVoe over tactics, eventually splitting Washington Equal Suffrage Association during N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909; ardent Democrat and William Jennings Bryan supporter; first woman delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1912; noted philanthropist, especially Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, Spokane Charities Commission, and Hutton Settlement for orphaned and unwanted children. A large, uncouth woman “with a questionable past and a flamboyant nature who was anathema to many other suffragists,” she nonetheless was Scott Duniway’s “close friend and disciple.” Scott Duniway rode in the Thomas Flyer that Arkwright Hutton decorated and entered in the Portland Rose Festival, 1897, and Arkwright Hutton was an invited guest on the platform for Scott Duniway’s seventy-eighth birthday celebration, 1912 (Laura Arksey, “Hutton, May Arkwright“; Montgomery, esp. 48-49, 104-05; Roberta Cheney, “From Rags to Riches,” in Western Writers of America 220-39; Moynihan, Rebel 194-95; P. Horner; Mulford 72-79). During the N.A.W.S.A. convention, meeting June 28-July 5 in Portland (History of Woman Suffrage 5: 117-50, esp. 135). The Morning Oregonian indeed devoted one paragraph to this event of the previous evening, calling the thirty assembled “the most distinguished body of women which has ever gathered at one table in the history of Portland” (6 July 1905). However, it does not mention Abigail’s “little speech.”
“EMINENT WOMEN I HAVE MET” – June 1, 1900
Although more broadly an outgrowth of the religious and moral awakenings of the first half of the nineteenth century, including the abolitionist and woman’s rights movements, the origin of the woman’s club movement traditionally is given as March, 1868: When columnist Jennie June was denied a ticket to a New York Press Club dinner feting Charles Dickens...
Although more broadly an outgrowth of the religious and moral awakenings of the first half of the nineteenth century, including the abolitionist and woman’s rights movements, the origin of the woman’s club movement traditionally is given as March, 1868: When columnist Jennie June was denied a ticket to a New York Press Club dinner feting Charles Dickens, she and four friends resolved to organize “a club composed of women only, that should manage its own affairs, represent as far as possible the active interests of women, and create a bond of fellowship between them, which many women, as well as men, thought at that time it would be impossible to establish.” Thus was founded Sorosis.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_1_76" id="identifier_1_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Croly 15-16. In its immediate exigence–exclusion from the public (which is to say, men’s) sphere–the club movement thus parallels the woman suffrage movement, which had been provoked by the exclusion of female delegates at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840.">1 The movement spread far and wide, by the end of the century representing a real social, civic and political force. Although the clubs’ stated purposes were varied (and evolving), including study (of literary and other topics), philanthropy, reform, and improved conditions for women and children, their underlying purposes were to give women an avenue to public life and, especially in the West, to offset economic development imperatives by making cultural and social concerns a part of community priorities.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_2_76" id="identifier_2_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Haarsager 3-4; Blair, Clubwoman. In its account of the third meeting of the infant Portland Woman’s Club, the Pacific Empire–which actively catered to woman’s clubbers–testifies to the club’s importance as an incubator of the skills of public participation: “Much harmony and good feeling characterized the entire proceedings, showing that Club women are quite as adept at reconciling each other’s differences of opinion, and abiding by the decisions of the majority as men. A number of bright women, hitherto unknown to fame, have already developed marked ability as thinkers, speakers and debaters. The Woman’s Club developes [sic] new opportunities and its results cannot be otherwise than beneficial to all who participated in its deliberations” (23 Jan. 1896).">2 Scott Duniway came to believe that woman’s clubs were, “consciously or not, great recruiting grounds for the Woman Suffrage cause,” and “enthusiastically” embraced the new device to cultivate public-mindedness, even among upper-class and conservative women who couldn’t yet abide the thought of voting. She was a charter member of the Portland Woman’s Club and second vice-president of the Oregon Federation of Women’s Clubs, comprising eighteen clubs from throughout the state and representing over six hundred members, from the latter’s founding in October, 1899, until 1902. The Equal Suffrage Association cooperated with club organizations even though many club members opposed suffrage, and even though Abigail’s enemies in the suffrage cause would attempt to use the Portland club against her. Club work also gave Scott Duniway entré to the upper crust of Portland society women who previously had ignored or spurned her.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_3_76" id="identifier_3_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A. Duniway, Path Breaking 122; Moynihan, Rebel 195-96, 213, 215; Writer’s Project; Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900; Haarsager 265. Until she was awakened in the mid-1890s to the potential for advancing the suffrage cause among more conservative, upper class women, Scott Duniway disdained these clubs as idle diversions for the leisured. When Cunningham Croly lost a reelection bid as its president in 1886, Scott Duniway gleefully declared that “Sorosis has been captured by the Woman Suffragists,” observing: “A majority of the brilliant women of Sorosis are fitted for weightier things than the discussion of the nice, placid topics to which they have heretofore been confined, and we look for them to exert a powerful influence in the near future on the great question of equal rights” (New Northwest 1 Apr. 1886; “Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association (1880)“). Like all of her predictions, this would prove to be overly optimistic. Nationally, one sign of equal suffrage’s continuing tenuous position in club circles is that the General Federation, founded in 1890, did not consider the subject until its 1910 convention and, even then, did so “in such a way that neither advocate nor opponent could have reason to object”: Kate M. Gordon, vice-president of N.A.W.S.A., spoke in favor, Alice Hill Chittenden of New York against, and a paper on restricted suffrage by Rudolph Blankenburg of Pennsylvania was read. No resolution, aye or nay, was proposed (Wood 265-66).">3 This speech, which Scott Duniway delivered on the final night of the state federation’s inaugural biennial convention, meeting in Pendleton,<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_4_76" id="identifier_4_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Pendleton was home to Oregon’s “mother club,” the Thursday Afternoon Club, founded by Adelia D. Wade and the first in the state to be admitted to the General Federation (in 1894); Mrs. Wade at this time also was the (first) president of the state federation (Croly 1011-16).">4 is in two parts. The first and longer part is aptly described by the speech’s title, and is classically epideictic. In this section, Scott Duniway recounts her personal impressions of numerous well-known women, in particular those who have influenced her own life. Her praise of these women and their accomplishments is uniformly glowing, including even Frances Willard of the W.C.T.U. This section is of historical interest (see, for example, her comments about Charlotte Emerson Brown and the origins of the club movement) and illustrates the importance of networks of personal relationships and influence in a mass movement. The most surprising revelation is that Abigail’s first “eminent” acquaintance wasn’t Susan B. Anthony but, rather, attorney Myra Colby Bradwell, of Illinois. The Federation met on the eve of the 1900 vote on an equal suffrage amendment; Abigail spoke on Friday, with the election just three days hence. Thus, at its end her address turns deliberative as she argues for women’s enfranchisement. While she sounds familiar themes of Oregon’s exceptionalism and its “chivalrous” men, Abigail also includes uncontroversial expediency arguments, attributing improved sanitation and public libraries–key concerns of clubwomen<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_5_76" id="identifier_5_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1899, Sarah A. Evans chaired a committee of the Portland Woman’s Club that obtained permissive legislation enabling Oregon municipalities to establish taxing districts for free public libraries, and established the first such district in the state. The Club also was deeply interested in sanitary improvements, and Evans also was the city market inspector for many years (Writer’s Project). Earlier on the day of this speech, the Federation “set on foot” a movement to obtain state monies for free traveling libraries (Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900).">5–to women’s efforts. These two parts are not so disparate as they may appear initially: The first, in celebrating a wide variety of women “path breakers,” implicitly proves that women deserve the vote and, thus, is further evidence in support of the second’s deliberative claim. So highly anticipated was this address that the convention removed from its meeting-place (a local church) to the courthouse. Following “several delightful musical numbers,” Abigail rose to speak. The Club Woman later reported: As she, in her happy, fluent manner, recalled one after another of this host of eminent women, telling of their personal appearance, their voice or gesture, some whom the younger members of the audience almost thought belonged to a past age–women like Harriet Beecher Stow, whose names are household idols, but of whom any personal recollection has almost passed away, a feeling of awe and reverence pervaded the audience which must have communicated itself to the speaker, for as she went from one to the other, telling of how they had helped and encouraged her in her early struggles, courage and strength was imparted to more than one of her listeners. Neither Mrs. Duniway’s ready wit nor apropos story was wanting, as was manifest by the roars of laughter and bursts of applause that frequently greeted her remarks. All went away feeling that the hour she spoke was far too short, and another hour might have been profitably spent in listening to her.6 An edited typescript of this speech can be found in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers.7 The following text relies on the version published in the Morning Oregonian on June 2, 1900. Most of the hand-written changes in the typescript are reflected in the published version, suggesting that these revisions were made prior to delivery or, at least, prior to publication. Most differences between the versions are typographical and cosmetic, with two notable exceptions: The typescript contains a paragraph missing from the published version and the published version contains the speech’s conclusion, missing from the typescript due to lost page(s). Material found only in the typescript is denoted by “[]”, while material found only in the Oregonian is denoted by “<>”. Madam President, Ladies and Gentlemen: While it has been exceedingly difficult for me to so arrange my work during this, the busiest and most important week of my life, [that I could come to this convention,] such is my estimate of the good that is to accrue from this gathering of representative women in our State Federation of Women’s Clubs, that I gladly trust the votes of men, who are to decide a grave question for us at the ballot-box next Monday, to bring before you a brief review of a few of the eminent women with whom my busy life has brought me into personal acquaintance during the last 30 years. The first woman of National reputation whose personal acquaintance I recall, was the late Myra Bradwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_8_76" id="identifier_8_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Myra Colby Bradwell (1831-1894): nation’s preeminent woman lawyer; abolitionist; first woman member of Illinois Bar Association and Illinois Press Association; born Manchester, Vermont; educated Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Elgin, Illinois; taught school, Memphis, Tennessee; married James B. Bradwell, 1852; in Northwestern Sanitary Commission during Civil War; president, Soldier’s Aid Society; founding editor, weekly Chicago Legal News, 1868, which became most important legal publication west of Alleghenies, her editorials influential in molding legal opinion and passing legislation; lobbied Illinois state constitutional convention on behalf of woman suffrage, 1869; helped organize American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; agitated particularly for removal of women’s legal disabilities; applied for admission to Illinois bar, 1869, but not admitted until 1890; admitted to practice before U.S. Supreme Court, 1892 (Thomas, “Bradwell”; Willard and Livermore 1: 115; “Myra Bradwell: Practicing Law is No Place for a Lady“).">8, <of Chicago,> editor of the Chicago Legal News, a great law journal, of which she was for many years the head. Mrs. Bradwell was, at the time our acquaintance began, and as I now recall her, a beautiful, stately matron, in the prime of life, and even then a recognized authority on legal jurisprudence for the State of Illinois, a position she held with honor at the time of her death. She was as proud of her good husband, Judge Bradwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_9_76" id="identifier_9_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Bolesworth Bradwell (1828-1907): eminent Chicago attorney, particularly expert in probate; temporary chair, first American Woman Suffrage Association convention, 1869; Illinois state legislator responsible for legislation making women eligible for school offices, office of notary public, and equal guardianship of children.">9, who survives her, and of her gifted children, as was Solomon’s ideal woman, of whom it is written, “her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband, also, and he praiseth her.” Never shall I forget my first impression of this modern Portia.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_10_76" id="identifier_10_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Portia is the wealthy heiress from Belmont in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, who is as intelligent and clever as she is beautiful. Disguised as a young law clerk, she saves Antonio from Shylock’s knife and contrives to marry her true love, Bassanio, while bound by a clause in her father’s will that requires her to marry whatever suitor chooses correctly from among three caskets. The evidence from this address tends to support (but not conclusively) Moynihan’s speculation that Scott Duniway met Colby Bradwell during her winter, 1870-71, trip to the California Woman Suffrage Association convention in San Francisco, where she also visited Laura de Force Gordon and Emily Pitts Stevens, whose Pioneer inspired her to launch the New Northwest (Rebel 86). Abigail says here that she was the mother of “many” children and had baby boys, one of whom was teething. At this time, she had six children; Clyde had just turned four; and Ralph was an infant (and so assuredly would have accompanied his mother to California, where Colby Bradwell would have had the opportunity to offer her “simple prescription for . . . swollen gums”). Also, Abigail here describes Colby Bradwell as a “matron, in the prime of life” and a “recognized authority on legal jurisprudence”; in the winter of 1870-71, Colby Bradwell turned 40 and the Chicago Legal News was in its third year of publication. On the other hand, Abigail compares Colby Bradwell’s “visit” to Susan B. Anthony’s, which could suggest that the former came to Oregon (the Duniway family was living in Albany in the winter of 1870-71), just as the latter did later in 1871. But this is not conclusive because “visit” is ambiguous: Scott Duniway could have visited with Colby Bradwell (in San Francisco) and still been visited by Anthony later in the year.">10 I was a young pioneer mother of many children. I had been taught from childhood that it was woman’s duty to suppress the struggling desire for knowledge, for utterance and all opportunity for expanding usefulness, of which this Federation of Women’s Clubs is today a significant exponent. I had been taught, and tried hard to believe, that my spirit’s demand to hear and be heard in the world was an unfeminine something, which women must stifle at any cost. So I was striving hard to be an “anti,” and a consistent one at that, for I was keeping myself out of the newspapers and struggling to make myself believe that my constant ill health was a wise dispensation of Providence. Mrs. Bradwell opened to my anxious mind an illimitable vista of previously undiscovered opportunity. “You are young yet,” she said, cheerily; “and when woman shall have discovered herself, all women will be ashamed of being invalids.” She then went on to explain a truth which thousands of women have since verified, that the primal cause of so much ill health among women11 was the divine discontent created by repressed mentality, which, under the conditions that then held sway, made dolls of society women, vassals of most wives, and hopeless drudges of the rest. And, while she said she sympathized with women in bad health, she said12 she was a whole lot sorrier for their husbands, who had yet to learn that woman’s greatest need was mental vent. She said that health depended upon happiness, and happiness upon environment. Then she turned, oh, so lovingly, to the13 teething baby, gave a simple prescription for its swollen gums, and added: “I repeat, you are young yet. By and by, when these babies are men, you will still be a young woman.” And, when she spoke, with beaming countenance, of the day that was even then dawning for awakened womanhood (Though I knew it not), she left me pressing my throbbing temples, but inhaling the inspiration of many a new idea. And so it came to pass that I had a vision, even when I needed it most, of the good time coming, and now here, when women could occasionally turn aside, as men have always done, to seek relief from daily cares and congregate themselves in clubs, to restore their health and spirits through the needed relaxation afforded by a brief opportunity to exchange opinions, and thus expand their understanding. Time passed, and my next eminent acquaintance was Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_14_76" id="identifier_14_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">14. I was then living in Portland; and having entered the arena of journalism with all the audacity of inexperience, I plunged along with so much perseverance that I made a success of my venture. That was in 187115, and Miss Anthony was 50 years old. I had heard so many dreadful things about Miss Anthony’s alleged ante-deluvian age and angularity of disposition that I felt more than half afraid of her. But she soon dispelled all prejudice by her womanly ways. Never have I met a more motherly woman, or one who could enter more heartily into the spirit of a busy household. Her visit, like Mrs. Bradwell’s, was both a revelation and an inspiration. Her intimate acquaintance with eminent men and women of whom I had all my life been reading, brought them for the first time into my very atmosphere. Her reminiscences of Horace Greeley<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_16_76" id="identifier_16_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1872): journalist, politician; founded widely-read New York Tribune, 1841; served briefly in U.S. House of Representatives, 1848-49, thereafter failing several attempts at election to Congress; abolitionist; free soil sympathizer; prominent Republican who bucked public opinion by opposing Lincoln’s renomination, 1864, and signing bail bond for jailed former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, 1867; nominated for President by anti-Grant Republicans, and endorsed by Democrats, 1872, but lost conclusively (Nevins; Ashley, 1690-1872 256-72).">16 and his gifted but eccentric wife17, of James<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_18_76" id="identifier_18_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Mott (1788-1868): Quaker reformer and abolitionist; born Long Island, New York; moved to Philadelphia, 1810; c. 1830 abandoned cotton commission business so as not to support slavery even indirectly; founding member, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833; delegate, World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840; presided over some sessions of Seneca Falls, New York, woman’s rights convention, 1848; accompanied his wife on her preaching and lecturing tours, thereby sparing her reprobation.">18 and Lucretia Mott<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_19_76" id="identifier_19_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer).">19, of Lucy Stone<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_20_76" id="identifier_20_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim).">20 and Henry B. Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_21_76" id="identifier_21_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909): born Bristol, England; Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist; one of earliest advocates of woman suffrage in America, making first speech in its favor in Cleveland, 1853; married Lucy Stone, 1855; co-edited Woman’s Journal.">21, of Henry Ward Beecher<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_22_76" id="identifier_22_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1813-1887): liberal Congregational minister, one of the most influential Protestant speakers of his time; opposed slavery; supported moderate Reconstruction policy; favored Grover Cleveland for President, 1884: advocated woman suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific biblical criticism; in events that scandalized nation, sued by Theodore Tilton for alleged adultery with his wife, 1874 (Ashley, 1690-1872 23-30).">22 and his famous sisters, Isabella Beecher Hooker<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_23_76" id="identifier_23_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1822-1907): born Litchfield, Connecticut; daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher and half sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher and Catharine Esther Beecher; in 1841 married John Hooker, lawyer and Spiritualist who died, 1901; converted to woman’s rights cause by writings of John Stuart Mill, esp. “The Enfranchisement of Women,” 1861; co-founded New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became nationally known when she addressed second N.W.S.A. convention, 1870; lobbied Connecticut legislature vigorously in favor of married women’s property bill drafted by her husband; supporter of Victoria Claflin Woodhull, including latter’s allegations of adultery against brother Henry; fascinated by Spiritualism and believed in matriarchal revolution; active in N.A.W.S.A. for many years; advocated “federal” route to woman suffrage; published Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities, 1874; Board of Lady Managers, 1893 Columbian Exposition; president, Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association until 1905; died in Hartford (Tyler, “Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker“).">23 and Harriet Beecher Stowe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_24_76" id="identifier_24_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“).">24, of Colonel Ingersoll25 and his happy home life, of William Lloyd Garrison26, Wendell Phillips<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_27_76" id="identifier_27_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1884): Harvard Law School graduate who sacrificed promising future to join abolitionist movement; close associate of William Lloyd Garrison; powerful orator; succeeded Garrison as president of American Anti-Slavery Society, 1865; after Civil War, also agitated for temperance, woman’s rights, universal suffrage, and Greenback Party (Ashley, 1690-1872 232-47).">27, Garrett [sic] Smith<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_28_76" id="identifier_28_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Gerrit Smith (1797-1874): philanthropist and reformer; cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton; born Utica, New York; gave both land and money to indigent women and blacks in New York; advocated Sunday School reform, vegetarianism, dress reform, woman suffrage, prison reform, and abolition; opposed Masons, tobacco and alcohol use, and capital punishment; vice-president, American Peace Society; probably provided moral and financial support for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry; active politically for fifty years; helped form Liberty party, running for Governor of New York on its ticket, 1840; Congress (independent), 1853-54; ran for Governor on “People’s State” ticket, 1858; campaigned for Lincoln’s reelection, 1864, and for Grant, 1868.">28, Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_29_76" id="identifier_29_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).">29 and their families, and many others of note, with whom I afterwards became personally well acquainted, and of all of whom she spoke with as tender deference as though they had all been absent members of her own family, [it] was to me as a revelation from heaven. She did it all so unconsciously, too, as though repeating the ordinary sayings and doings of one’s every-day neighbors, that when in after years I met and knew them all, it was as if I had known them from childhood. With Miss Anthony’s public career, since her first visit to the Pacific Coast, in 1871, the most of you are familiar. But you have not had much opportunity to know of her social life, which now, and for the past 10 years, has brought her into contact with the most eminent men and women of this most eminent era, all of whom delight to do her honor. My next eminent woman acquaintance was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was in the Summer of 1871 that I first met her, as a guest at her beautiful home in the blue hills of Jersey.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_30_76" id="identifier_30_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Actually in May, 1872, during her maiden trip to a national suffrage convention, held in New York; a handwritten correction of the year appears in the typescript. This was the convention at which Victoria Claflin Woodhull broke with N.W.S.A. and declared her candidacy for President as head of her own Equal Rights Party. From Cady Stanton’s desk, Abigail reported her encounter with Claflin Woodhull, conceding the latter to be “a woman of exceedingly fine form and presence” who “possesses a sort of magnetic power over the ignorant rabble who flock to the standard”; the next day, she concluded: “Now that Woodhull and her infatuated followers have sloughed and run off from the legitimate work of Woman Suffrage and National Reform, we shall have opportunity to work, untrammeled by the extreme views of avowed free loveists and the ignorant marauds of rabid Internationals” (New Northwest 31 May 1872).">30 To Mrs. Stanton belongs the honor of being the first woman in history to make a successful demand for the recognition of the property rights of married women, who, prior to that time, [in] 1848, had lived entirely under the dominion of the old common law of England, the law that, where not repealed, still makes a personal death-warrant of a woman’s covenant at the marriage altar by merging her existence into that of her husband, making, under the law, the husband and wife one, and the husband that one. My friends, it is well for the race that men, through all the ages, have been better, as men, than the laws that were compiled to govern women by the men who preceded them. There were men living in the great State of New York in 1848 whose daughter had inherited vast wealth; and those fathers, seeing the danger that was menacing this wealth by improvident suitors, who were ready, as men still are, to marry a competence, aided Mrs. Stanton in her efforts to secure the property rights of wives–rights which some women, known as “antis,” are using today in a vain endeavor to beat back the further progress of other women’s freedom, with as much success as was achieved by Dame Partington when she tried to stop the progress of the waves of the Atlantic Ocean with her broom<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_31_76" id="identifier_31_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A well-known figure in antebellum American folklore, Ruth Partington was said to inhabit a beach cottage in Sidmouth, Devonshire. Her fame was made by English clergyman, political reformer and wit, Sydney Smith, in a 1831 speech to a crowd angry over the defeat of a parliamentary reform bill in the House of Lords, in which he compared the Lords’ resistance to public outrage to Dame Partington’s dogged but futile determination to resist a gale: “In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber picked up the character in the Boston Post in 1847; the popular Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854 (James M. Cornelius, “Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Partington“; cf. “4879. Sydney Smith. 1771-1845. John Bartlett, comp. 1919. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed“).">31; a progress that finds new and irresistible impulse in the State and National Federations of Women’s Clubs. Mrs. Stanton is, in personal appearance, the opposite of Miss Anthony. The latter is tall, not spare, like the typical old maid of a past era, but as well rounded, though not as plumply stomached, as the modern well-to-do bachelor of the sterner sex; while Mrs. Stanton is short, plump, pretty and roly-poly, in figure much like Queen Victoria32, but in features far handsomer. Miss Anthony combs her iron-gray hair smoothly over her Webster-like head, while Mrs. Stanton’s snow-white locks are rolled in fluffy abundance and garden row regularly over her classic forehead33. Both women are domestic, social and dressy, and move in the foremost literary and intellectual circles everywhere. I have only time to say of them further, in this connection, that the older our clubwomen grow, and the further they advance in knowledge and in understanding, the more will they appreciate and honor the self-denying zeal of the originators of this woman movement, whose echoes reach today across the continent and re-echo back with a larger utterance from the singing shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Eastern seas. My next eminent woman acquaintance was the late Dr. Clemence Lozier<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_34_76" id="identifier_34_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1812-1888): physician, reformer; born Plainfield, New Jersey; orphaned, 1824; married Abraham Witton Lozier, 1830; conducted charity work for poor in Albany after husband’s death, 1837; graduated from Syracuse Eclectic College with medical degree, 1853; successfully lobbied for first woman’s medical school in New York State, Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, funded by proceeds of her practice, 1863; president, New York City Woman Suffrage Society, 1873-86; president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1877-78; died of angina pectoris (Cantor; “Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier“; “Clemence Sophia Lozier”).">34. Imagine a little, plump, pretty, gentle-voiced lady, with short, white curls framing a face as classic as the Madonna’s, the occupant and owner of a commodious downtown residence in New York; one of those “brown stone huts” made famous by the “wants” of Oliver Wendell Holmes<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_35_76" id="identifier_35_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1809-1894): physician who publicized the contagiousness of puerperal fever, 1843; married Amelia Lee Jackson; father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes; humorist and poet, winning national acclaim for “Old Ironsides,” 1830, and author of “Breakfast-Table” essays in Atlantic Monthly, beginning 1857 (Who was Who 582).">35. Imagine this little woman, who hesitated not to combine the wisdom of Aesculapius36 and of Hahnemann<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_37_76" id="identifier_37_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(Christian Friedrich) Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843): German physician; founder of homeopathy, the principle of which is that “likes are cured by likes,” that is, diseases are cured by drugs that produce disease-like symptoms in healthy subjects.">37 in her very extensive practice, with the skill and dexterity of a Pasteur<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_38_76" id="identifier_38_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): French chemist and microbiologist who proved that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease, originated vaccines for rabies, anthrax and chicken cholera, invented the purification-by-heat process known as pasteurization, and, by applying these discoveries, saved the wine, beer, and silk industries.">38 or a Koch39; imagine her great mansion filled, as it always was, with illustrious guests and many patients from afar and anear, all gathered in her spacious dining-room for morning devotion[s], led by the gentle doctor, assisted by her gifted son<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_40_76" id="identifier_40_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abraham Witton Lozier (1838-1896): born New York; graduated New York City College, 1859; graduated, College of Physicians and Surgeons; surgeon, Sanitary Commission, Civil War; married Charlotte Irene Denman in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; president, Orange YMCA; active in temperance and Sunday School work; died of heart disease, New York (“Abraham Witton Lozier, M.D.“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“).">40, an Army surgeon, and his able wife<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_41_76" id="identifier_41_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier (1844-1870): born New Jersey; daughter of Jacob Denman and Selina Lyon; family moved to Galena, Illinois, then Winona, Minnesota, 1852; married Abraham Lozier in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; doctor, New York Medical College and Hospital for Women; vice-president, National Workingwomen’s Association; died New York (“Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“).">41, herself a physician of repute, and one-time president of Sorosis, whose pretty children complete the group, and you have a composite picture of domestic life and family wisdom such as will soon prevail wherever the enlightened clubwoman’s influence can be felt. Then there were other noted physicians often present, among them Dr. Rachel Bodly [sic]<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_42_76" id="identifier_42_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Rachel Littler Bodley (1831-1888): chemist; botanist; born Cincinnati, Ohio; graduated Wesleyan Female College, 1849; studied two years in physics and chemistry, Philadelphia Polytechnic College; professor of natural sciences, Cincinnati Female Seminary; chair of chemistry and toxicology, Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1865; dean, 1874-88 (Alsop; Willard and Livermore 1: 100-01).">42, now deceased, and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacoby [sic]<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_43_76" id="identifier_43_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906): leading female physician in America who supported arguments for woman’s rights with scientific proofs; born London; moved to New York, 1848; graduate, Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1864; practiced at New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston; first woman admitted and second to graduate from the Ecole de Médicine, Paris, 1867-71; Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women, 1871-89; married Dr. Abraham Jacobi, “father of American pediatrics,” 1873; winner, Boylston Prize, Harvard, 1876; first woman member, New York Academy of Medicine; authored over 120 scientific articles and 9 books, including Common Sense Applied to Women’s Suffrage, 1894 (Lubove; Who was Who 625).">43, whose masterly argument before the New York Constitutional Convention a few years ago can never be resisted or overcome by anything but vice, conservatism and ignorance, which always pull together against the best interests of the race. There was Elizabeth D. [sic] Curtis<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_44_76" id="identifier_44_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Typescript: “B.” Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (c. 1862-1914): Staten Island, New York; daughter of Anna Shaw Curtis and George William Curtis; organized several working girl’s clubs; longtime president, Samaritan Circle of King’s Daughters; president, St. Cecelia Society of Staten Island; officer, Charity Organization Society; staunch suffragist; frequent speaker at New York state suffrage conventions and before legislature (New York Times 13 May 1894, 8 June 1894, 8 Nov. 1895, 10 Nov. 1895, 10 Oct. 1897, 7 Mar. 1914).">44, daughter of the late George William Curtis<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_45_76" id="identifier_45_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1824-1892): writer and reformer who became known for “Easy Chair” pieces in Harper’s Weekly; spoke out on public affairs as lecturer and, from 1863, as editor for Harper’s, advocating abolitionism, woman’s rights, civil service reform, and restraint of corporate power; refused ambassadorship to England to remain at Harper’s, 1877.">45, who represented her gifted father in the same convention, whom no member tried to answer except with a dogged negative vote, but whose argument will live when every voter who recorded himself against her demand for liberty and progress will have been forgotten. The next eminent woman I recall is Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_46_76" id="identifier_46_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1910): born Bristol, England; moved to New York, 1832, and to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1838; earned medical degree from Geneva College, 1849; barred from practice in most European and American hospitals, 1850-58; private practice in New York City, 1851; lectured on public hygiene and founded New York Infirmary for Women and Children, 1857; lecturing in England, 1858-59, first female physician listed in Medical Register of the United Kingdom; helped found U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1861; founded Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, 1868-69; moved to London, 1869, founding National Health Society and helping organize London School of Medicine for Women; anti-vivisectionist; author of several important medical and scientific works (Thomson; Willard and Livermore 1: 91-92; Who was Who 102).">46, the pioneer woman physician, with a strong English face and a passion for methodical system in her profession that has made her fame worldwide. Dr. Blackwell braved the scorn, obloquy and organized opposition of the whole medical world that she might acquaint herself with the highest medical knowledge and open the way for all time to come to the great and useful army of physicians for whom she broke the Austrian-like phalanx of organized despotism that had previously debarred her sex from her now acknowledged realm. Then comes Frances E. Willard<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_47_76" id="identifier_47_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-1898): teacher, temperance advocate; corresponding secretary (1874-77) and president (1879-98), Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; president, World W.C.T.U., 1891-98; supported woman suffrage as means to temperance; advocated partisan approach, linking temperance to “Home Protection” and other political parties (Dillon; Dow, “Frances E. Willard”).">47, with her winsome grace and wondrous eloquence, who alone of all orthodox women could lead the more devout of her sex away from the barred walls of conservatism and let them see that, outside the church, as well as in it, the true fatherhood of God and brotherhood of <man> abounds [for]evermore. There was Lillie Devereaux Blake<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_48_76" id="identifier_48_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Johnson Devereux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Taylor; Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97).">48, stately, handsome and gifted, an author and orator of renown; there was Margaret Parker<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_49_76" id="identifier_49_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Margaret V. (E.?) Parker: Scottish suffragist; speaker on boat chartered by New York state suffrage association during dedication of Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, 1886; author of resolution formally organizing International Council of Women, March, 1888, during gathering of the same name in Washington, D.C., pursuant to a previous call (June, 1887) by N.W.S.A. for assemblage in celebration of fortieth anniversary of Seneca Falls convention (Sewall 34-35, 60-61; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 124, 840).">49, of Dundee, Scotland, who has often crossed the Atlantic Seas to hold wise converse with the eminent women of Manhattan, and many, many others whom I have met at the home of Dr. Lozier, each of whom deserves a more extended notice than time permits. Among the sweetest-voiced, dearest, kindliest women I have ever met was Lucy Stone, who, finding in her girlhood no opening for a woman to enter college [in the East], worked her way to the then new West, to Oberlin, O[hio]., and who, like her good husband, Henry B. Blackwell, who survives her, has left the sweet influence of a spotless life upon this busy age. Her gentle voice was always raised in sympathy with everything good and noble, and her memory will live in the hearts of her countrywomen as long as woman’s work for liberty appeals to human sympathy. Now passes before my mental vision the motherly face and venerable figure of Julia Ward Howe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_50_76" id="identifier_50_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim).">50, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and now comes Mary A. Livermore<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_51_76" id="identifier_51_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).">51, the great manager of the famous sanitary commission of our Civil War. And here is Harriet Beecher Stowe, in whose consecrated presence I have sat for hours, listening like a fascinated child to her recitals of her ante-bellum experiences in the South upon which many parts of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were founded, and of which it would require a whole evening to tell you half. Return with me now to New York, and we will visit Jenny June<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_52_76" id="identifier_52_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Jane Cunningham Croly (1829-1901): born Market-Harborough, Leicestershire, England; came to U.S. with family, 1841; pen name “Jennie June”; created first syndicated woman’s column, “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip,” 1857; managed woman’s department, New York World, 1862-72; chief staff writer, Demorests’ women’s magazines, 1860-87; published Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 1866; advocated women’s financial independence and economic equality, insisting that women must earn their rights through work; instrumental in woman’s club movement; after she was refused entrance to New York Press Club’s “men-only” reception for Charles Dickens, founded “Sorosis,” first woman’s club, 1868; president, 1870, 1875-86; called national convention that resulted in formation of General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1889; founded and became president, Women’s Press Club of New York, 1889; authored History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 1898; professor, journalism and literature, Rutgers University; died New York City (Schlesinger, “Croly”; Ashley, 1873-1900 67-69; “Jane Cunningham Croly“).">52, the winsome, dainty and companionable author, the Mrs. C. [sic] G.53 Croly of the social world, who is now a venerable matron, with a life crowned with honor, whose achievements in journalism are widely known, and of whose home life I can only pause to say that, like that of all the others mentioned, it is most exemplary. Often, when sojourning in Philadelphia, I have enjoyed delightful visits with the late James and Lucretia Mott, in their happy and hospitable Quaker home, where the primmest neatness did not preclude the keenest enjoyment of the many luxuries with which their home abounded. Lucretia Mott was the stateliest, handsomest “old lady” I ever saw. As straight as an Indian warrior and as graceful as a swan, her classic face always framed by the sheerest and smartest of snowy caps, her sloping shoulders covered with an immaculate and dainty shawl, crossed over her bosom after the manner of our grandmothers’ days, she was the charming prototype of the club woman of today, who, while finding time to consider the well-being of the wide, wide world, “looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Of the eminent women I have met I must not forget to mention Mrs. Henrotin<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_54_76" id="identifier_54_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ellen Martin Henrotin (1847-1922): labor and social reformer, woman’s club leader; Chicago society woman, joined Fortnightly Club, 1847, co-founded Friday Club, 1887, and joined reform-minded Chicago Woman’s Club, early 1880s; instrumental in organizing Woman’s Branch of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; president, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894-98, during period of rapid growth; president, National Women’s Trade Union League, 1904-07, advocating unionization of women workers and improved working conditions; advocated sex hygiene training in public schools to reduce “social evil” (prostitution) (Boyer, “Henrotin”).">54, whom we all delight to honor, nor Mrs. Potter Palmer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_55_76" id="identifier_55_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918): queen of Chicago society; musician, linguist, writer, philanthropist, art collector; born and raised Louisville, Kentucky; married financial giant Potter Palmer (owner of celebrated Palmer House hotel), 1871; president, Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; regular at Jane Addam’s Hull House; supporter of Women’s Trade Union League; mildly supportive of woman suffrage but strongly opposed to militancy; retired to Sarasota, Florida, where her property “The Oaks” became bay-front community for rich and famous, and her farm “Meadowcrest Pastures” became Myakka River State Park (I. Ross, “Palmer”; Patricia Chadwick, “Historical Biography: Bertha Honore Palmer”).">55, of world-wide fame; nor Dr. Anna Howard Shaw<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_56_76" id="identifier_56_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A..; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexner, “Shaw”; Linkugel).">56, nor Carrie Chapman Catt<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_57_76" id="identifier_57_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-04, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63).">57, nor Laura Clay<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_58_76" id="identifier_58_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1849-1941): president, Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, 1881-88, reorganized as Kentucky Equal Rights Association, 1888-1912; Democrat, supported states’ rights and opposed Negro suffrage; became estranged from mainstream woman’s movement as it turned to federal solution; vice-president, Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, 1913, which promoted state suffrage; resigned from both N.A.W.S.A. and state Equal Rights Association, 1919; life-long W.C.T.U. member campaigned for repeal of Prohibition on states’ rights grounds (Boyer, “Clay”; Murphy).">58, nor Mrs. Keating<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_59_76" id="identifier_59_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Martha Adalaide Cook Keating (1848-1942): club woman; born Hillsdale, Michigan; daughter of Betsy Wolford Cook and John Potter Cook, pioneer banker and lumberman who helped draft state constitution; graduate, Hillsdale College; married Loftus Nano Keating, attorney, 1869; co-founder, Muskegon Woman’s Club, 1890, and president, 1892-93; founder, class in parliamentary procedure, 1904, and club parliamentarian until death; charter member and president, Michigan State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899-1900; notable successes during her two terms as president included seating of women on state boards of control, employment of women physicians at state institutions having female inmates, and approval of Woman’s Building at Michigan Agricultural College. She had welcomed delegates to the previous year’s N.A.W.S.A. convention in Grand Rapids, at which Scott Duniway delivered “How to Win the Ballot.” Abigail probably met both Cook Keating and Emily Burton Ketcham (infra, n. 59) at this convention (History of the Michigan State Federation 29-32, 198-99; Harley and MacDowell 2: 63; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 323-24; Croly 702-03, 710, 716).">59, nor Emily B. Ketchum<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_60_76" id="identifier_60_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clary, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907).">60, nor Josephine K. Henry<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_61_76" id="identifier_61_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry (1846-?): born Newport, Kentucky; married Confederate Captain William Henry, 1868; superintendent, legislative and petition work, Kentucky Equal Rights Association; leader, Kentucky Woman Suffrage party; “the only woman in the South who ever ran for a State office,” she was Prohibition party candidate, clerk, Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1890; published over three hundred articles on women’s property rights; instrumental in General Assembly’s passage of Married Woman’s Property Act, 1894; nominee, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1894; discussed as possible Presidential candidate, 1900; accomplished musician (Willard and Livermore 1: 372-73; “Josephine K. Henry“).">61, nor Virginia D. Young<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_62_76" id="identifier_62_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Virginia Durant Young (?-1906): of Fairfax, South Carolina; owner/editor, Enterprise; participated in first suffrage meeting in South Carolina, in Greenville, 1890; addressed W.C.T.U. of Beaufort, 1891; petitioned legislature for her personal enfranchisement, 1892; petitioned state constitutional convention for amendment granting suffrage to tax-paying women, 1895; petitioned legislature for Presidential suffrage, 1896; founded state suffrage association; president, 1900; active in state press association (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 922-24, 5: 35, 204).">62. I wish I might give you a pen picture of one63 and all of these women and tarry with you at64 their pleasant homes. But I see I cannot; <so> go with me now to the Nation’s capital, and let us look in for a while upon a woman’s convention. It is one of the earlier meetings of what is now the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. It is not one of the great biennials that have grown <up> of late into such great65 proportions as to seem to men unwieldy; but a meeting in which the center of attraction is the eminent founder of the Woman’s Club movement, the late, lamented Charlotte Emerson Brown<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_66_76" id="identifier_66_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1838-1895): club-woman and organizer; born Andover, Massachusetts; educated in Andover and abroad, studying particularly music and languages; moved to Rockford, Illinois, where founded musical and French clubs and Rockford Conservatory of Music; following marriage to Rev. William B. Brown, 1880, and three years abroad, settled in East Orange, New Jersey, where elected president of Woman’s Club; one of committee of seven that formed General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, and its first president, 1890 (Bowerman; cf. Willard and Livermore 1: 125-26).">66. This noted woman, having discovered that the general tendency of woman’s organizations was toward a crystallization, rather than a correlation of forces, originated the woman’s club idea. She was the wife of a noted physician67, possessed of ample means, and an ardent friend of the equal rights movement. But she saw that many women who had not yet embraced the equal rights idea and had become congealed, so to speak, against avowing its principles, needed the club movement to fill a long-felt want. So like our own Mrs. A. H. H. Stuart<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_68_76" id="identifier_68_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart (1839-1902): Washington suffragist inspired by Anthony’s and Scott Duniway’s 1871 visit to territorial legislature; chair, Washington Territory Board of Immigration, c. 1875-80; prominent clubwoman; founder, on March 10, 1883, and first president of Woman’s Club of Olympia (first woman’s club in Washington and second on Pacific Coast); chair, Constitution Committee, Washington State Federation of Woman’s Clubs organizing convention, September, 1896; treasurer, State Federation, 1898; wife of Robert G. Stuart; spoke at organizing meeting of Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895, becoming member, 1899; died at 62 in San Francisco, January 6 (M. Andrews 7; Beard 63; Croly 1132-34, 1144-46, 1149; Haarsager 59, 135, 191; “Third [sic: fourth] Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 16, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Library Association of Portland Newspaper Index microfiche, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project).">68, the honored mother of the woman’s club movement in our fair metropolis, who began her public work in the equal suffrage movement, Mrs. Brown resolved to circumvent the prejudices that hedged so many women against their own interests, and give them an outlook, from another direction, at the broader horizon they had hitherto failed to observe. The woman’s club movement is flourishing in a manner that attests the wisdom and foresight of Abby H. H. Stuart and Charlotte Emerson Brown. In its wise determination to eschew the consideration of all partisan and sectarian questions, upon which men and women naturally differ (though none can settle them), thus leaving our clubs69 to grow freely into the broader spirit of “diversity in unity” that alone can extend our intellectual horizon along every line, moral, religious and patriotic, we owe more to the two eminent women just mentioned than most of us will soon realize. As became Mrs. Brown’s exalted station, she lived elegantly and entertained handsomely. Her home was the center of education, refinement and philanthropy, and its atmosphere was permeated with an exalted spirit of politeness[, piety] and patriotism. In the midst of her usefulness she fell asleep. But, though she rests from her labors her works do follow her. At a brilliant reception given in February last, at the Corcoran Art Gallery, in the city of Washington, I had the pleasure of once more meeting Grace Greenwood<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_70_76" id="identifier_70_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823-1904): born Pompey, New York; daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke; descendant of renowned preacher and theologian Rev. Jonathan Edwards; moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 1842; graduate, Greenwood Institute; popular columnist and correspondent for leading newspapers and magazines of day, including antislavery National Era, Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Monthly, New York Times, Lady’s Home Journal; pen name “Grace Greenwood”; published Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, 1850; married Leander Lippincott, 1853 (later divorced); published Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe and History of My Pets, 1854; supported abolition and woman’s rights; founded Little Pilgrim, one of first children’s magazines, and wrote children’s books; living in Washington, D.C., raised money for North during Civil War; Lincoln called her “the little patriot”; lectured on peace, prison reform, and capital punishment on lyceum circuit; died New Rochelle, New York (Welter, “Lippincott”; Ashley, 1690-1872 303-09; “Sara Jane Clarke (Grace Greenwood)“).">70, the well-known author and journalist, now far along in years; Olive Logan<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_71_76" id="identifier_71_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1839-1909): actress, author, lecturer; born Elmira, New York; educated Methodist Female Seminary and Academy of the Sacred Heart, Cincinnati; gave up theatre by 1868 to become lecturer on popular subjects; attended American Equal Rights Association convention, 1869; married William Wirt Sikes, 1872, then James O’Neill Logan, 1892; supported suffrage in articles and lectures; wrote and translated plays (A. Johnson; Who was Who 741).">71, the famous actress of our war era, now quite deaf, but otherwise well preserved; May Wright Sewall<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_72_76" id="identifier_72_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="May Eliza Wright Sewall (1844-1920): educator, founded Girls’ Classical School, Indianapolis, introducing dress reforms and physical education, and adopting rigorous college preparatory curriculum; co-founded Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, 1878, affiliated with N.W.S.A.; key force in 1881-83 campaign for state suffrage, which nearly succeeded; president, National (1897-99) and International Council of Women (1899-1904), attempts to unify women’s organizations of all types; U.S. Representative, Paris Exposition, 1900; called and presided over International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace, at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (Phillips, “Sewall”).">72, the accomplished president of the International Council of Women, founded in America in 1886, by the mother of all these movements, Susan B. Anthony, of whom Mrs. Sewall has been a staunch ally for many years; the charming and intelligent daughters of Lucy Stone<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_73_76" id="identifier_73_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for thirty-five years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost twenty years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim).">73, Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_74_76" id="identifier_74_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cady Stanton had two daughters: 1. Margaret Stanton (1852-?). 2. Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (1856-1940): born Seneca Falls, New York; graduated Vassar College, 1878; assisted her mother and Susan B. Anthony with monumental History of Woman Suffrage and authored concluding chapter of second volume, on rival A.W.S.A., 1881; married William H. Blatch and moved to England, 1882; granted M.A. degree by Vassar for study of England’s rural poor, 1894; returned to U.S., 1902; organized mass meetings at Cooper Union and annual Suffrage Day parades in New York City, beginning 1908; organized Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, 1907, which became Women’s Political Union, 1910, and merged with Alice Paul’s and Lucy Burns’ Congressional Union, 1916, then Woman’s Party, 1917; championed unsuccessful New York suffrage amendment, 1915 (similar measure passed, 1917); published Mobilizing Woman Power, supporting war as providing equal work for women, 1918; head, Speakers Bureau, Wartime Food Administration; director, Women’s Land Army; published autobiography, Challenging Years, 1940; promoted her mother’s and her woman’s rights work in later years; retired and died, Greenwich, Connecticut (Flexner, “Blatch”; Jacqueline Clement, “Harriot Stanton Blatch”).">74 and Julia Ward Howe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_75_76" id="identifier_75_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ward Howe had four daughters: 1. Julia Romana (1844-?); 2. Florence Marion (1845-?); 3. Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (1850-1943), best known as a writer of stories, nursery and nonsense rhymes, books for young girls, and regional novels (E. Johnson); and 4. Maud Howe Elliott (1854-1948), a writer of novels, newspaper art criticism, travel narratives, and biographies, and a founding member of the Progressive Party (Levenson).">75, each of whom was taking part in the festivities in honor of her noble mother, and wearing her mantle royally. There, also, I again met the now venerable Charlotte R. Wilbour<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_76_76" id="identifier_76_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charlotte Beebe Wilbour (1830-?): born Norwich, Connecticut; educated at Wilbraham, Massachusetts; corresponding secretary, Loyal Women’s National League, an abolitionist group, 1864; with “Kate” (Mary Katherine Keemle) Field and “Jennie June” (Jane Cunningham Croly), founded Sorosis, the first woman’s club, in New York, 1868; six terms as president, beginning 1870; instituted lecture series on health and dress reform; as president, “crowning work” was organization of Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873; helped organize New York state suffrage society, 1869; first president, New York City Society, 1870; speaker, second N.W.S.A. convention in Washington, D.C., 1870; moved to Paris, 1874; helped revise Woman’s Bible, 1895; honorary president, Rhode Island state suffrage association, 1903; speaker, N.A.W.S.A. convention in Portland, 1905 (History of Woman Suffrage 2: 80, 421, 424, 3: 396, 403, 405, 6: 566; Croly 15-29; Oregonian 28 June 1905; “Charles Edwin Wilbour”).">76, a noted philanthropist of New York, widow of the famous Egyptologist who spent 20-odd years under the shadow of the Pyramids<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_77_76" id="identifier_77_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-?): first American Egyptologist; born Little, Rhode Island; classical education included Brown; reporter, New York Tribune, 1854; admitted to New York bar, 1859; began study of Egyptian antiquities, 1872; associated with Heinrich Karl Brugsch (Brugsch Bey) and Gaston C. C. Maspero, accompanying latter on five winter expeditions up Nile, then on own; Brooklyn Museum Library of Egyptology named for him (“Charles Edwin Wilbour”).">77, and who speaks fluently a dozen languages; and last, but by no means least, except in stature, Clara Barton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_78_76" id="identifier_78_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).">78, the eminent philanthropist, and president of the International Red Cross Society, who commissioned me to present to every Red Cross woman and every club woman in the State of Oregon her love and compliments and ask them to read and circulate her “Plea to Voters,” urging them to vote for the enfranchisement of the mothers, wives and sweethearts of her soldier boys. I have so diligently complied with her request that I have distributed many thousands of leaflets containing the plea, and now have only a few of them left. Take all that are left, club women. Read them, circulate them and ask your chivalrous gentlemen friends to read them before they cast their ballots next Monday. Clara Barton, though the heroine of a hundred cataclysms, wherein, womanlike, she distinguished herself by preserving life, and not by destroying it, is not a striking woman to look at. She is diminutive in stature, dresses plainly, <combs her hair smoothly> and speaks timidly. But she has more power to save life at her command than Queen Victoria79, who is her warm personal friend; more than the President of the United States80; more than that of the army and navy combined. But like Mary A. Livermore, the famous heroine of the great Sanitary Commission, she is the political vassal of an aristocracy of sex. Nobody accuses her81 of being out of her sphere, but the mothers of our soldier boys are speaking her name with a reverence that is born of love, and an admiration inspired by gratitude. [If time permitted, I would gladly tell you of Kate Field<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_82_76" id="identifier_82_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1838-1896): successful journalist and lyceum lecturer who also aspired to be singer, actress, playwright, and literary critic; born St. Louis; launched thirty-five-year career in journalism by writing travel letters from Italy to Boston Courier, 1859; contributed especially to Springfield Republican and New York Tribune; launched her own weekly, Kate Field’s Washington, 1890-95; her two favorite lyceum lectures concerned Dickens and what she called “Musical Monologue,” incorporating her parody of a London society dinner party and a Spanish song and dance; made stage debut, 1874, acting in minor plays in America and England for several years; publicized commercial and reform causes ranging from telephone, California wines, and glass manufacture to purchase of John Brown’s farm as national shrine, cremation, international copyright, a national music conservatory, spiritualism, and anti-polygamy; founder of Sorosis, first woman’s club; lukewarm advocate of woman’s rights, not endorsing suffrage until 1893 (Baldwin; I. Ross, Ladies 36-37). She died in 1896, not 1898; Scott Duniway could be confusing the first and second woman’s congresses.">82, the modern woman journalist, who was preparing to attend our Oregon Congress of Women at the time of her death, which occurred two years ago in Honolulu; of Sarah B. Cooper<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_83_76" id="identifier_83_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835-1896): kindergarten educator, author, and Bible teacher; born Cazenovia, New York; wrote book reviews and articles (often on woman’s role in society) for Overland Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, and evangelical press; married Halsey F. Cooper, editor, Chattanooga Advertiser, 1855; two daughters; cousin of Robert G. Ingersoll, “the great agnostic”; tried for heresy by Presbyterians for disavowing doctrines of infant damnation and everlasting punishment, 1881, she left denomination, becoming Congregationalist; instrumental in establishing and administering system of forty kindergartens among San Francisco’s poor, unsupervised, preschool children, 1879-95, which was model for 287 others across U.S. and abroad; first president, International Kindergarten Union, 1892; charter member, Associated Charities of San Francisco; active in Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association, Century Club (San Francisco’s first woman’s club), and General Federation of Women’s Clubs (treasurer, 1894-96); spoke at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; one-time opponent of woman suffrage, vice-chair of almost-successful California suffrage campaign, 1896; suffered from depression following husband’s suicide, 1885; died of asphyxia, with daughter Harriet, in their San Francisco apartment, December 11, 1896 (Jacklin; Willard and Livermore 1: 206-07; “Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper”; “Guide to the Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper Papers“). Her “tragic death” occurred at the hands of her severely depressed daughter, Harriet, who, following several unsuccessful suicide attempts, asphyxiated both herself and her mother by gas on the night of December 10-11, 1896.">83, the late lamented humanitarian of San Francisco, whose tragic death we yet mourn; of Clara S. Foltz<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_84_76" id="identifier_84_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934): California’s first woman lawyer, 1878; president, California Woman Suffrage Association, early 1880s; publisher, New American Woman, 1916-18; advocate for penal reform and public defenders for poor; first woman deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, 1911-13; declined appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921; candidate in 1930 Republican gubernatorial primary, running on equal rights platform. Mistreated by her spouse and needing money for her children, young Mrs. Foltz sewed for Scott Duniway’s millinery store and wrote for the New Northwest before moving to California in 1875 (Gilb, “Foltz”; Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 96).">84, the California lawyer who once lived in Oregon, who has twice crossed the Atlantic in the interest of wealthy clients; of Frances Fuller Victor<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_85_76" id="identifier_85_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16).">85, the eminent historian, also a former resident of Oregon, now of San Francisco. But I must hasten to a close, omitting hundreds of eminent women, young and old, the equals of any yet mentioned.] Madam President<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_86_76" id="identifier_86_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Adelia D. (Mrs. Charles Bird) Wade: born in Maine; lived in Massachusetts; moved to Pendleton, 1880; founded Thursday Afternoon Club of Pendleton, the “mother” woman’s club of Oregon, with departments of literature, art, and music, the belles-lettres, Greek history, art, and literature; State chairman of correspondence, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894; first president of State Federation, 1899-1902; “an advocate of the higher intellectual development of women, and a lover of the best literature,” and “a writer of no mean ability” (“Writer’s Project“; Croly 1011-14; Haarsager 265).">86: With your permission I come now to speak, not of politics–for that is a question we do not discuss; but of patriotism, our fundamental principle of woman’s clubdom. It is of the question of fundamental government, of individual citizenship, of which I would speak, a question which vitally concerns every <patriotic> woman at this particular time; a question as far above partisan politics as the heavens are above [the] earth. I allude, of course, to the fundamental87 question of self government which men are to decide for us next Monday–permanently if in the affirmative, but temporarily if in the negative. Our great club leader, Sarah B. Platt<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9ceminent-women-i-have-met%e2%80%9d-june-1-1900/#footnote_88_76" id="identifier_88_76" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Sophia Chase Platt Decker (1852-1912): vigorous participant in successful Colorado suffrage campaign, 1893; president, Woman’s Club of Denver, 1894, undertaking vacation-school classes for children, municipal civil service reform, cleaner streets; elected vice-president, General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, 1898; president, 1904-08; advocated activism over study, remarking to GFWC meeting in Denver, 1904: “Dante is dead. He has been dead for several centuries, and I think it is time that we dropped the study of his Inferno and turned our attention to our own”; member, National Child Labor Committee; strong advocate of conservation, only woman invited to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 conference on subject; Colorado Board of Charities and Correction, 1898-1912, implemented penal reforms; spoken of as possible U.S. Senate candidate, 1912 (Rinehart; Haarsager 295).">88, of Colorado, has tasted of the sweets of citizenship and pronounces it good. Through her and her co-workers, the leading women of Denver and the best element among the men of that city, who could accomplish nothing in the way of municipal reform till aided by the women’s votes, the great inter-mountain center of the mighty West has inaugurated sanitary conditions that have already transformed the city from an abode of disease to a haven of health. In like manner, through the help of the votes of tax-paying women, the public-spirited citizens of New Orleans have cleansed their city of the yellow fever scourge, by a system of sewage that men alone were unable to vote into being. In Lewiston, and in Boise, Idaho, the same improvement prevails, including the successful establishment of our Portland Woman’s Club pet enterprise, a free library system in the interest of all the people. And to you, men and brethren, whom we are proud to welcome to these councils, I want to say, with my profoundest bow, that the eyes of the world are turned today toward Oregon. “As goes Oregon, so goes the Union.” Last February89 it was my privilege to sit among the veterans of a great mass meeting in the great city of Washington, under the shadow of the Goddess of Liberty. Does it seem strange to you, gentlemen, that Liberty is always represented by a woman? I account for this anomaly by the reflection that men in all ages have builded from ideals that in time were to be realized. As I sat in the great meeting just mentioned, Susan B. Anthony, the heroine of the occasion, arose, and said: “I see a face that recalls the roar of the Pacific ocean; that recalls mighty forests of giant evergreens, with their pointed tops piercing the misty sky; that recalls long ranges of mighty mountains with their highest peaks crowned with perpetual snow; that recalls broad uplands, stretching away toward the mountain mines; that recalls verdant valleys, dotted with pretty villages and peaceful homes; that recalls mighty rivers, moving ever onward to the sea! All of this means Oregon! At the apex of all this sits Oregon. I am told that Oregon annually expends tens of thousands of dollars to advertise her virgin resources through her Boards of Trade, <her Chambers of Commerce, her advertising bureaus and what not. Now, if the men of Oregon are as wide-awake as the one delegate from her borders says they are, they will adopt the equal suffrage amendment and the state will advertise herself, as Colorado and Idaho did when the men of those young, vigorous growing states made their women free and equal with themselves.” I was proud of Oregon that day; prouder yet of being an Oregon pioneer; and when you, the chivalrous men of this mighty state, shall prove yourselves worthy of our great expectations by your votes for our amendment next Monday, you will rise higher than ever in the estimation of club women, who already like you and you cannot help it. And to you, Madam President, to whose patriotic foresight I am indebted for the opportunity to make this appeal in this first annual meeting of our State Federation of Women’s Clubs, permit me to say there are many thousands of women in Oregon who join me in the thanks that well from overflowing hearts. Continue in your glorious work. Mount up the heights of wisdom, And crush each error low. Keep back no words of knowledge That human hearts should know. Be faithful to thy neighbor, In service of thy Lord. And then a golden chaplet Will be thy just reward.>90 NOTES Croly 15-16. In its immediate exigence–exclusion from the public (which is to say, men’s) sphere–the club movement thus parallels the woman suffrage movement, which had been provoked by the exclusion of female delegates at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. Haarsager 3-4; Blair, Clubwoman. In its account of the third meeting of the infant Portland Woman’s Club, the Pacific Empire–which actively catered to woman’s clubbers–testifies to the club’s importance as an incubator of the skills of public participation: “Much harmony and good feeling characterized the entire proceedings, showing that Club women are quite as adept at reconciling each other’s differences of opinion, and abiding by the decisions of the majority as men. A number of bright women, hitherto unknown to fame, have already developed marked ability as thinkers, speakers and debaters. The Woman’s Club developes [sic] new opportunities and its results cannot be otherwise than beneficial to all who participated in its deliberations” (23 Jan. 1896). A. Duniway, Path Breaking 122; Moynihan, Rebel 195-96, 213, 215; Writer’s Project; Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900; Haarsager 265. Until she was awakened in the mid-1890s to the potential for advancing the suffrage cause among more conservative, upper class women, Scott Duniway disdained these clubs as idle diversions for the leisured. When Cunningham Croly lost a reelection bid as its president in 1886, Scott Duniway gleefully declared that “Sorosis has been captured by the Woman Suffragists,” observing: “A majority of the brilliant women of Sorosis are fitted for weightier things than the discussion of the nice, placid topics to which they have heretofore been confined, and we look for them to exert a powerful influence in the near future on the great question of equal rights” (New Northwest 1 Apr. 1886; “Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association (1880)“). Like all of her predictions, this would prove to be overly optimistic. Nationally, one sign of equal suffrage’s continuing tenuous position in club circles is that the General Federation, founded in 1890, did not consider the subject until its 1910 convention and, even then, did so “in such a way that neither advocate nor opponent could have reason to object”: Kate M. Gordon, vice-president of N.A.W.S.A., spoke in favor, Alice Hill Chittenden of New York against, and a paper on restricted suffrage by Rudolph Blankenburg of Pennsylvania was read. No resolution, aye or nay, was proposed (Wood 265-66). Pendleton was home to Oregon’s “mother club,” the Thursday Afternoon Club, founded by Adelia D. Wade and the first in the state to be admitted to the General Federation (in 1894); Mrs. Wade at this time also was the (first) president of the state federation (Croly 1011-16). In 1899, Sarah A. Evans chaired a committee of the Portland Woman’s Club that obtained permissive legislation enabling Oregon municipalities to establish taxing districts for free public libraries, and established the first such district in the state. The Club also was deeply interested in sanitary improvements, and Evans also was the city market inspector for many years (Writer’s Project). Earlier on the day of this speech, the Federation “set on foot” a movement to obtain state monies for free traveling libraries (Morning Oregonian 2 June 1900). Sept. 1900: 217 I found the first eight pages in Scrapbook #2, and four remaining pages in Scrapbook #1. Myra Colby Bradwell (1831-1894): nation’s preeminent woman lawyer; abolitionist; first woman member of Illinois Bar Association and Illinois Press Association; born Manchester, Vermont; educated Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Elgin, Illinois; taught school, Memphis, Tennessee; married James B. Bradwell, 1852; in Northwestern Sanitary Commission during Civil War; president, Soldier’s Aid Society; founding editor, weekly Chicago Legal News, 1868, which became most important legal publication west of Alleghenies, her editorials influential in molding legal opinion and passing legislation; lobbied Illinois state constitutional convention on behalf of woman suffrage, 1869; helped organize American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; agitated particularly for removal of women’s legal disabilities; applied for admission to Illinois bar, 1869, but not admitted until 1890; admitted to practice before U.S. Supreme Court, 1892 (Thomas, “Bradwell”; Willard and Livermore 1: 115; “Myra Bradwell: Practicing Law is No Place for a Lady“). James Bolesworth Bradwell (1828-1907): eminent Chicago attorney, particularly expert in probate; temporary chair, first American Woman Suffrage Association convention, 1869; Illinois state legislator responsible for legislation making women eligible for school offices, office of notary public, and equal guardianship of children. Portia is the wealthy heiress from Belmont in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, who is as intelligent and clever as she is beautiful. Disguised as a young law clerk, she saves Antonio from Shylock’s knife and contrives to marry her true love, Bassanio, while bound by a clause in her father’s will that requires her to marry whatever suitor chooses correctly from among three caskets. The evidence from this address tends to support (but not conclusively) Moynihan’s speculation that Scott Duniway met Colby Bradwell during her winter, 1870-71, trip to the California Woman Suffrage Association convention in San Francisco, where she also visited Laura de Force Gordon and Emily Pitts Stevens, whose Pioneer inspired her to launch the New Northwest (Rebel 86). Abigail says here that she was the mother of “many” children and had baby boys, one of whom was teething. At this time, she had six children; Clyde had just turned four; and Ralph was an infant (and so assuredly would have accompanied his mother to California, where Colby Bradwell would have had the opportunity to offer her “simple prescription for . . . swollen gums”). Also, Abigail here describes Colby Bradwell as a “matron, in the prime of life” and a “recognized authority on legal jurisprudence”; in the winter of 1870-71, Colby Bradwell turned 40 and the Chicago Legal News was in its third year of publication. On the other hand, Abigail compares Colby Bradwell’s “visit” to Susan B. Anthony’s, which could suggest that the former came to Oregon (the Duniway family was living in Albany in the winter of 1870-71), just as the latter did later in 1871. But this is not conclusive because “visit” is ambiguous: Scott Duniway could have visited with Colby Bradwell (in San Francisco) and still been visited by Anthony later in the year. Typescript: “them” Typescript: “added that” Typescript: “my” Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). September (Edwards, Sowing 14). (1811-1872): journalist, politician; founded widely-read New York Tribune, 1841; served briefly in U.S. House of Representatives, 1848-49, thereafter failing several attempts at election to Congress; abolitionist; free soil sympathizer; prominent Republican who bucked public opinion by opposing Lincoln’s renomination, 1864, and signing bail bond for jailed former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, 1867; nominated for President by anti-Grant Republicans, and endorsed by Democrats, 1872, but lost conclusively (Nevins; Ashley, 1690-1872 256-72). Mary Youngs Cheney Greeley: born in Connecticut; married July 5, 1836; seven children, only two daughters surviving to adulthood (Nevins 528, 531). James Mott (1788-1868): Quaker reformer and abolitionist; born Long Island, New York; moved to Philadelphia, 1810; c. 1830 abandoned cotton commission business so as not to support slavery even indirectly; founding member, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833; delegate, World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840; presided over some sessions of Seneca Falls, New York, woman’s rights convention, 1848; accompanied his wife on her preaching and lecturing tours, thereby sparing her reprobation. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer). (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). Henry Browne Blackwell (1825-1909): born Bristol, England; Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist; one of earliest advocates of woman suffrage in America, making first speech in its favor in Cleveland, 1853; married Lucy Stone, 1855; co-edited Woman’s Journal. (1813-1887): liberal Congregational minister, one of the most influential Protestant speakers of his time; opposed slavery; supported moderate Reconstruction policy; favored Grover Cleveland for President, 1884: advocated woman suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific biblical criticism; in events that scandalized nation, sued by Theodore Tilton for alleged adultery with his wife, 1874 (Ashley, 1690-1872 23-30). (1822-1907): born Litchfield, Connecticut; daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher and half sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher and Catharine Esther Beecher; in 1841 married John Hooker, lawyer and Spiritualist who died, 1901; converted to woman’s rights cause by writings of John Stuart Mill, esp. “The Enfranchisement of Women,” 1861; co-founded New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became nationally known when she addressed second N.W.S.A. convention, 1870; lobbied Connecticut legislature vigorously in favor of married women’s property bill drafted by her husband; supporter of Victoria Claflin Woodhull, including latter’s allegations of adultery against brother Henry; fascinated by Spiritualism and believed in matriarchal revolution; active in N.A.W.S.A. for many years; advocated “federal” route to woman suffrage; published Womanhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities, 1874; Board of Lady Managers, 1893 Columbian Exposition; president, Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association until 1905; died in Hartford (Tyler, “Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker”; “Isabella Beecher Hooker“). (1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“). Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899): politician and orator known as “the great agnostic,” advocating higher criticism of Bible, humanism, and scientific rationalism; Illinois Attorney General, 1867-69; staunch Republican. (1805-1879): crusading journalist; publisher of abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, 1831-65; founded New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1832; helped found American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833. (1811-1884): Harvard Law School graduate who sacrificed promising future to join abolitionist movement; close associate of William Lloyd Garrison; powerful orator; succeeded Garrison as president of American Anti-Slavery Society, 1865; after Civil War, also agitated for temperance, woman’s rights, universal suffrage, and Greenback Party (Ashley, 1690-1872 232-47). Gerrit Smith (1797-1874): philanthropist and reformer; cousin of Elizabeth Cady Stanton; born Utica, New York; gave both land and money to indigent women and blacks in New York; advocated Sunday School reform, vegetarianism, dress reform, woman suffrage, prison reform, and abolition; opposed Masons, tobacco and alcohol use, and capital punishment; vice-president, American Peace Society; probably provided moral and financial support for John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry; active politically for fifty years; helped form Liberty party, running for Governor of New York on its ticket, 1840; Congress (independent), 1853-54; ran for Governor on “People’s State” ticket, 1858; campaigned for Lincoln’s reelection, 1864, and for Grant, 1868. (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). Actually in May, 1872, during her maiden trip to a national suffrage convention, held in New York; a handwritten correction of the year appears in the typescript. This was the convention at which Victoria Claflin Woodhull broke with N.W.S.A. and declared her candidacy for President as head of her own Equal Rights Party. From Cady Stanton’s desk, Abigail reported her encounter with Claflin Woodhull, conceding the latter to be “a woman of exceedingly fine form and presence” who “possesses a sort of magnetic power over the ignorant rabble who flock to the standard”; the next day, she concluded: “Now that Woodhull and her infatuated followers have sloughed and run off from the legitimate work of Woman Suffrage and National Reform, we shall have opportunity to work, untrammeled by the extreme views of avowed free loveists and the ignorant marauds of rabid Internationals” (New Northwest 31 May 1872). A well-known figure in antebellum American folklore, Ruth Partington was said to inhabit a beach cottage in Sidmouth, Devonshire. Her fame was made by English clergyman, political reformer and wit, Sydney Smith, in a 1831 speech to a crowd angry over the defeat of a parliamentary reform bill in the House of Lords, in which he compared the Lords’ resistance to public outrage to Dame Partington’s dogged but futile determination to resist a gale: “In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber picked up the character in the Boston Post in 1847; the popular Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854 (James M. Cornelius, “Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Partington“; cf. “4879. Sydney Smith. 1771-1845. John Bartlett, comp. 1919. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed“). Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. Typescript: “brow” Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier (1812-1888): physician, reformer; born Plainfield, New Jersey; orphaned, 1824; married Abraham Witton Lozier, 1830; conducted charity work for poor in Albany after husband’s death, 1837; graduated from Syracuse Eclectic College with medical degree, 1853; successfully lobbied for first woman’s medical school in New York State, Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital for Women, funded by proceeds of her practice, 1863; president, New York City Woman Suffrage Society, 1873-86; president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1877-78; died of angina pectoris (Cantor; “Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier“; “Clemence Sophia Lozier”). (1809-1894): physician who publicized the contagiousness of puerperal fever, 1843; married Amelia Lee Jackson; father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes; humorist and poet, winning national acclaim for “Old Ironsides,” 1830, and author of “Breakfast-Table” essays in Atlantic Monthly, beginning 1857 (Who was Who 582). Also Asclepius: Greco-Roman god of medicine, son of Apollo (god of healing, truth, and prophecy) and the nymph Coronis. (Christian Friedrich) Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843): German physician; founder of homeopathy, the principle of which is that “likes are cured by likes,” that is, diseases are cured by drugs that produce disease-like symptoms in healthy subjects. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895): French chemist and microbiologist who proved that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease, originated vaccines for rabies, anthrax and chicken cholera, invented the purification-by-heat process known as pasteurization, and, by applying these discoveries, saved the wine, beer, and silk industries. (Heinrich Hermann) Robert Koch (1843-1910): German physician; a founder of bacteriology who discovered tubercle bacillus, 1882, and cholera bacillus, 1883; awarded Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 1905. Abraham Witton Lozier (1838-1896): born New York; graduated New York City College, 1859; graduated, College of Physicians and Surgeons; surgeon, Sanitary Commission, Civil War; married Charlotte Irene Denman in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; president, Orange YMCA; active in temperance and Sunday School work; died of heart disease, New York (“Abraham Witton Lozier, M.D.“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“). Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier (1844-1870): born New Jersey; daughter of Jacob Denman and Selina Lyon; family moved to Galena, Illinois, then Winona, Minnesota, 1852; married Abraham Lozier in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1866; doctor, New York Medical College and Hospital for Women; vice-president, National Workingwomen’s Association; died New York (“Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“; “Descendants of Dr. Charlotte Irene Denman Lozier“). Rachel Littler Bodley (1831-1888): chemist; botanist; born Cincinnati, Ohio; graduated Wesleyan Female College, 1849; studied two years in physics and chemistry, Philadelphia Polytechnic College; professor of natural sciences, Cincinnati Female Seminary; chair of chemistry and toxicology, Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1865; dean, 1874-88 (Alsop; Willard and Livermore 1: 100-01). Mary Corinna Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906): leading female physician in America who supported arguments for woman’s rights with scientific proofs; born London; moved to New York, 1848; graduate, Female Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1864; practiced at New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston; first woman admitted and second to graduate from the Ecole de Médicine, Paris, 1867-71; Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary for Women, 1871-89; married Dr. Abraham Jacobi, “father of American pediatrics,” 1873; winner, Boylston Prize, Harvard, 1876; first woman member, New York Academy of Medicine; authored over 120 scientific articles and 9 books, including Common Sense Applied to Women’s Suffrage, 1894 (Lubove; Who was Who 625). Typescript: “B.” Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (c. 1862-1914): Staten Island, New York; daughter of Anna Shaw Curtis and George William Curtis; organized several working girl’s clubs; longtime president, Samaritan Circle of King’s Daughters; president, St. Cecelia Society of Staten Island; officer, Charity Organization Society; staunch suffragist; frequent speaker at New York state suffrage conventions and before legislature (New York Times 13 May 1894, 8 June 1894, 8 Nov. 1895, 10 Nov. 1895, 10 Oct. 1897, 7 Mar. 1914). (1824-1892): writer and reformer who became known for “Easy Chair” pieces in Harper’s Weekly; spoke out on public affairs as lecturer and, from 1863, as editor for Harper’s, advocating abolitionism, woman’s rights, civil service reform, and restraint of corporate power; refused ambassadorship to England to remain at Harper’s, 1877. (1821-1910): born Bristol, England; moved to New York, 1832, and to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1838; earned medical degree from Geneva College, 1849; barred from practice in most European and American hospitals, 1850-58; private practice in New York City, 1851; lectured on public hygiene and founded New York Infirmary for Women and Children, 1857; lecturing in England, 1858-59, first female physician listed in Medical Register of the United Kingdom; helped found U.S. Sanitary Commission, 1861; founded Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, 1868-69; moved to London, 1869, founding National Health Society and helping organize London School of Medicine for Women; anti-vivisectionist; author of several important medical and scientific works (Thomson; Willard and Livermore 1: 91-92; Who was Who 102). Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-1898): teacher, temperance advocate; corresponding secretary (1874-77) and president (1879-98), Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; president, World W.C.T.U., 1891-98; supported woman suffrage as means to temperance; advocated partisan approach, linking temperance to “Home Protection” and other political parties (Dillon; Dow, “Frances E. Willard”). Elizabeth Johnson Devereux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Taylor; Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97). Margaret V. (E.?) Parker: Scottish suffragist; speaker on boat chartered by New York state suffrage association during dedication of Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, 1886; author of resolution formally organizing International Council of Women, March, 1888, during gathering of the same name in Washington, D.C., pursuant to a previous call (June, 1887) by N.W.S.A. for assemblage in celebration of fortieth anniversary of Seneca Falls convention (Sewall 34-35, 60-61; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 124, 840). (1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim). Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). Jane Cunningham Croly (1829-1901): born Market-Harborough, Leicestershire, England; came to U.S. with family, 1841; pen name “Jennie June”; created first syndicated woman’s column, “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip,” 1857; managed woman’s department, New York World, 1862-72; chief staff writer, Demorests’ women’s magazines, 1860-87; published Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 1866; advocated women’s financial independence and economic equality, insisting that women must earn their rights through work; instrumental in woman’s club movement; after she was refused entrance to New York Press Club’s “men-only” reception for Charles Dickens, founded “Sorosis,” first woman’s club, 1868; president, 1870, 1875-86; called national convention that resulted in formation of General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1889; founded and became president, Women’s Press Club of New York, 1889; authored History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 1898; professor, journalism and literature, Rutgers University; died New York City (Schlesinger, “Croly”; Ashley, 1873-1900 67-69; “Jane Cunningham Croly“). Should be “D. G.”, for David Goodman Croly (1829-1889). Ellen Martin Henrotin (1847-1922): labor and social reformer, woman’s club leader; Chicago society woman, joined Fortnightly Club, 1847, co-founded Friday Club, 1887, and joined reform-minded Chicago Woman’s Club, early 1880s; instrumental in organizing Woman’s Branch of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; president, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894-98, during period of rapid growth; president, National Women’s Trade Union League, 1904-07, advocating unionization of women workers and improved working conditions; advocated sex hygiene training in public schools to reduce “social evil” (prostitution) (Boyer, “Henrotin”). Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918): queen of Chicago society; musician, linguist, writer, philanthropist, art collector; born and raised Louisville, Kentucky; married financial giant Potter Palmer (owner of celebrated Palmer House hotel), 1871; president, Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; regular at Jane Addam’s Hull House; supporter of Women’s Trade Union League; mildly supportive of woman suffrage but strongly opposed to militancy; retired to Sarasota, Florida, where her property “The Oaks” became bay-front community for rich and famous, and her farm “Meadowcrest Pastures” became Myakka River State Park (I. Ross, “Palmer”; Patricia Chadwick, “Historical Biography: Bertha Honore Palmer”). (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A..; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexner, “Shaw”; Linkugel). Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-04, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63). (1849-1941): president, Kentucky Woman Suffrage Association, 1881-88, reorganized as Kentucky Equal Rights Association, 1888-1912; Democrat, supported states’ rights and opposed Negro suffrage; became estranged from mainstream woman’s movement as it turned to federal solution; vice-president, Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, 1913, which promoted state suffrage; resigned from both N.A.W.S.A. and state Equal Rights Association, 1919; life-long W.C.T.U. member campaigned for repeal of Prohibition on states’ rights grounds (Boyer, “Clay”; Murphy). Martha Adalaide Cook Keating (1848-1942): club woman; born Hillsdale, Michigan; daughter of Betsy Wolford Cook and John Potter Cook, pioneer banker and lumberman who helped draft state constitution; graduate, Hillsdale College; married Loftus Nano Keating, attorney, 1869; co-founder, Muskegon Woman’s Club, 1890, and president, 1892-93; founder, class in parliamentary procedure, 1904, and club parliamentarian until death; charter member and president, Michigan State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1899-1900; notable successes during her two terms as president included seating of women on state boards of control, employment of women physicians at state institutions having female inmates, and approval of Woman’s Building at Michigan Agricultural College. She had welcomed delegates to the previous year’s N.A.W.S.A. convention in Grand Rapids, at which Scott Duniway delivered “How to Win the Ballot.” Abigail probably met both Cook Keating and Emily Burton Ketcham (infra, n. 59) at this convention (History of the Michigan State Federation 29-32, 198-99; Harley and MacDowell 2: 63; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 323-24; Croly 702-03, 710, 716). Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “<a href="http://hall.michiganwomen.org/honoree.php?C=130&A=253~20~114~96~172~79~2~62~238~113~46~80~3~152~167~74~138~63~92~196~4~242~32~121~84~229~153~48~231~192~41~129~82~69~109~42~254~93~97~56~175~103~13~249~260~207~21~126~104~230~5~98~131~27~53~38~195~139~239~219~106~57~22~147~58~107~127~6~255~173~144~85~17~148~250~47~261~208~228~49~221~251~43~205~135~168~256~181~33~115~232~176~23~14~75~169~130~162~44~198~204~99~7~118~119~8~136~222~50~227~15~157~65~150~108~24~154~170~163~76~9~209~110~140~70~59~51~155~16~158~156~241~60~182~191~257~116~190~28~164~243~125~160~197~86~193~223~29~134~39~159~111~61~177~132~87~52~199~54~35~210~211~64~112~200~183~165~245~258~100~10~122~71~262~240~77~94~120~11~259~36~25~244~224~151~178~55~88~45~184~128~72~246~78~171~233~141~180~206~189~73~235~123~83~89~145~18~66~26~237~30~212~188~142~220~90~19~40~161~218~133~81~247~225~67~37~248~146~217~91~143~12~236~31~68~1~213~101~117~214~174~102~226~137~185~124~234~95~216~166~187">Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clary, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907). Josephine Kirby Williamson Henry (1846-?): born Newport, Kentucky; married Confederate Captain William Henry, 1868; superintendent, legislative and petition work, Kentucky Equal Rights Association; leader, Kentucky Woman Suffrage party; “the only woman in the South who ever ran for a State office,” she was Prohibition party candidate, clerk, Kentucky Court of Appeals, 1890; published over three hundred articles on women’s property rights; instrumental in General Assembly’s passage of Married Woman’s Property Act, 1894; nominee, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1894; discussed as possible Presidential candidate, 1900; accomplished musician (Willard and Livermore 1: 372-73; “Josephine K. Henry“). Virginia Durant Young (?-1906): of Fairfax, South Carolina; owner/editor, Enterprise; participated in first suffrage meeting in South Carolina, in Greenville, 1890; addressed W.C.T.U. of Beaufort, 1891; petitioned legislature for her personal enfranchisement, 1892; petitioned state constitutional convention for amendment granting suffrage to tax-paying women, 1895; petitioned legislature for Presidential suffrage, 1896; founded state suffrage association; president, 1900; active in state press association (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 922-24, 5: 35, 204). Typescript: “each” Typescript: “in” Typescript: “big” (1838-1895): club-woman and organizer; born Andover, Massachusetts; educated in Andover and abroad, studying particularly music and languages; moved to Rockford, Illinois, where founded musical and French clubs and Rockford Conservatory of Music; following marriage to Rev. William B. Brown, 1880, and three years abroad, settled in East Orange, New Jersey, where elected president of Woman’s Club; one of committee of seven that formed General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, and its first president, 1890 (Bowerman; cf. Willard and Livermore 1: 125-26). Actually, William B. Brown, to whom Charlotte was married on July 27, 1880, was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Newark, New Jersey (Bowerman 110). Abigail Howard Hunt Stuart (1839-1902): Washington suffragist inspired by Anthony’s and Scott Duniway’s 1871 visit to territorial legislature; chair, Washington Territory Board of Immigration, c. 1875-80; prominent clubwoman; founder, on March 10, 1883, and first president of Woman’s Club of Olympia (first woman’s club in Washington and second on Pacific Coast); chair, Constitution Committee, Washington State Federation of Woman’s Clubs organizing convention, September, 1896; treasurer, State Federation, 1898; wife of Robert G. Stuart; spoke at organizing meeting of Portland Woman’s Club, December 19, 1895, becoming member, 1899; died at 62 in San Francisco, January 6 (M. Andrews 7; Beard 63; Croly 1132-34, 1144-46, 1149; Haarsager 59, 135, 191; “Third [sic: fourth] Annual Announcement of the Woman’s Club of Portland, Oregon, 1899-1900” 16, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.; Library Association of Portland Newspaper Index microfiche, OR Hist. Soc.; Writer’s Project). Typescript: “sex” Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823-1904): born Pompey, New York; daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke; descendant of renowned preacher and theologian Rev. Jonathan Edwards; moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 1842; graduate, Greenwood Institute; popular columnist and correspondent for leading newspapers and magazines of day, including antislavery National Era, Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Monthly, New York Times, Lady’s Home Journal; pen name “Grace Greenwood”; published Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, 1850; married Leander Lippincott, 1853 (later divorced); published Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe and History of My Pets, 1854; supported abolition and woman’s rights; founded Little Pilgrim, one of first children’s magazines, and wrote children’s books; living in Washington, D.C., raised money for North during Civil War; Lincoln called her “the little patriot”; lectured on peace, prison reform, and capital punishment on lyceum circuit; died New Rochelle, New York (Welter, “Lippincott”; Ashley, 1690-1872 303-09; “Sara Jane Clarke (Grace Greenwood)“). (1839-1909): actress, author, lecturer; born Elmira, New York; educated Methodist Female Seminary and Academy of the Sacred Heart, Cincinnati; gave up theatre by 1868 to become lecturer on popular subjects; attended American Equal Rights Association convention, 1869; married William Wirt Sikes, 1872, then James O’Neill Logan, 1892; supported suffrage in articles and lectures; wrote and translated plays (A. Johnson; Who was Who 741). May Eliza Wright Sewall (1844-1920): educator, founded Girls’ Classical School, Indianapolis, introducing dress reforms and physical education, and adopting rigorous college preparatory curriculum; co-founded Indianapolis Equal Suffrage Society, 1878, affiliated with N.W.S.A.; key force in 1881-83 campaign for state suffrage, which nearly succeeded; president, National (1897-99) and International Council of Women (1899-1904), attempts to unify women’s organizations of all types; U.S. Representative, Paris Exposition, 1900; called and presided over International Conference of Women Workers to Promote Permanent Peace, at Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (Phillips, “Sewall”). Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for thirty-five years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost twenty years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim). Cady Stanton had two daughters: 1. Margaret Stanton (1852-?). 2. Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch (1856-1940): born Seneca Falls, New York; graduated Vassar College, 1878; assisted her mother and Susan B. Anthony with monumental History of Woman Suffrage and authored concluding chapter of second volume, on rival A.W.S.A., 1881; married William H. Blatch and moved to England, 1882; granted M.A. degree by Vassar for study of England’s rural poor, 1894; returned to U.S., 1902; organized mass meetings at Cooper Union and annual Suffrage Day parades in New York City, beginning 1908; organized Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, 1907, which became Women’s Political Union, 1910, and merged with Alice Paul’s and Lucy Burns’ Congressional Union, 1916, then Woman’s Party, 1917; championed unsuccessful New York suffrage amendment, 1915 (similar measure passed, 1917); published Mobilizing Woman Power, supporting war as providing equal work for women, 1918; head, Speakers Bureau, Wartime Food Administration; director, Women’s Land Army; published autobiography, Challenging Years, 1940; promoted her mother’s and her woman’s rights work in later years; retired and died, Greenwich, Connecticut (Flexner, “Blatch”; Jacqueline Clement, “Harriot Stanton Blatch”). Ward Howe had four daughters: 1. Julia Romana (1844-?); 2. Florence Marion (1845-?); 3. Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards (1850-1943), best known as a writer of stories, nursery and nonsense rhymes, books for young girls, and regional novels (E. Johnson); and 4. Maud Howe Elliott (1854-1948), a writer of novels, newspaper art criticism, travel narratives, and biographies, and a founding member of the Progressive Party (Levenson). Charlotte Beebe Wilbour (1830-?): born Norwich, Connecticut; educated at Wilbraham, Massachusetts; corresponding secretary, Loyal Women’s National League, an abolitionist group, 1864; with “Kate” (Mary Katherine Keemle) Field and “Jennie June” (Jane Cunningham Croly), founded Sorosis, the first woman’s club, in New York, 1868; six terms as president, beginning 1870; instituted lecture series on health and dress reform; as president, “crowning work” was organization of Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873; helped organize New York state suffrage society, 1869; first president, New York City Society, 1870; speaker, second N.W.S.A. convention in Washington, D.C., 1870; moved to Paris, 1874; helped revise Woman’s Bible, 1895; honorary president, Rhode Island state suffrage association, 1903; speaker, N.A.W.S.A. convention in Portland, 1905 (History of Woman Suffrage 2: 80, 421, 424, 3: 396, 403, 405, 6: 566; Croly 15-29; Oregonian 28 June 1905; “Charles Edwin Wilbour”). Charles Edwin Wilbour (1833-?): first American Egyptologist; born Little, Rhode Island; classical education included Brown; reporter, New York Tribune, 1854; admitted to New York bar, 1859; began study of Egyptian antiquities, 1872; associated with Heinrich Karl Brugsch (Brugsch Bey) and Gaston C. C. Maspero, accompanying latter on five winter expeditions up Nile, then on own; Brooklyn Museum Library of Egyptology named for him (“Charles Edwin Wilbour”). (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62). Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. William McKinley Typescript: “Clara Barton” Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1838-1896): successful journalist and lyceum lecturer who also aspired to be singer, actress, playwright, and literary critic; born St. Louis; launched thirty-five-year career in journalism by writing travel letters from Italy to Boston Courier, 1859; contributed especially to Springfield Republican and New York Tribune; launched her own weekly, Kate Field’s Washington, 1890-95; her two favorite lyceum lectures concerned Dickens and what she called “Musical Monologue,” incorporating her parody of a London society dinner party and a Spanish song and dance; made stage debut, 1874, acting in minor plays in America and England for several years; publicized commercial and reform causes ranging from telephone, California wines, and glass manufacture to purchase of John Brown’s farm as national shrine, cremation, international copyright, a national music conservatory, spiritualism, and anti-polygamy; founder of Sorosis, first woman’s club; lukewarm advocate of woman’s rights, not endorsing suffrage until 1893 (Baldwin; I. Ross, Ladies 36-37). She died in 1896, not 1898; Scott Duniway could be confusing the first and second woman’s congresses. Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835-1896): kindergarten educator, author, and Bible teacher; born Cazenovia, New York; wrote book reviews and articles (often on woman’s role in society) for Overland Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, and evangelical press; married Halsey F. Cooper, editor, Chattanooga Advertiser, 1855; two daughters; cousin of Robert G. Ingersoll, “the great agnostic”; tried for heresy by Presbyterians for disavowing doctrines of infant damnation and everlasting punishment, 1881, she left denomination, becoming Congregationalist; instrumental in establishing and administering system of forty kindergartens among San Francisco’s poor, unsupervised, preschool children, 1879-95, which was model for 287 others across U.S. and abroad; first president, International Kindergarten Union, 1892; charter member, Associated Charities of San Francisco; active in Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association, Century Club (San Francisco’s first woman’s club), and General Federation of Women’s Clubs (treasurer, 1894-96); spoke at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; one-time opponent of woman suffrage, vice-chair of almost-successful California suffrage campaign, 1896; suffered from depression following husband’s suicide, 1885; died of asphyxia, with daughter Harriet, in their San Francisco apartment, December 11, 1896 (Jacklin; Willard and Livermore 1: 206-07; “Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper”; “Guide to the Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper Papers“). Her “tragic death” occurred at the hands of her severely depressed daughter, Harriet, who, following several unsuccessful suicide attempts, asphyxiated both herself and her mother by gas on the night of December 10-11, 1896. Clara Shortridge Foltz (1849-1934): California’s first woman lawyer, 1878; president, California Woman Suffrage Association, early 1880s; publisher, New American Woman, 1916-18; advocate for penal reform and public defenders for poor; first woman deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, 1911-13; declined appointment as Assistant U.S. Attorney General, 1921; candidate in 1930 Republican gubernatorial primary, running on equal rights platform. Mistreated by her spouse and needing money for her children, young Mrs. Foltz sewed for Scott Duniway’s millinery store and wrote for the New Northwest before moving to California in 1875 (Gilb, “Foltz”; Moynihan, “Let Women Vote” 96). Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16). Adelia D. (Mrs. Charles Bird) Wade: born in Maine; lived in Massachusetts; moved to Pendleton, 1880; founded Thursday Afternoon Club of Pendleton, the “mother” woman’s club of Oregon, with departments of literature, art, and music, the belles-lettres, Greek history, art, and literature; State chairman of correspondence, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1894; first president of State Federation, 1899-1902; “an advocate of the higher intellectual development of women, and a lover of the best literature,” and “a writer of no mean ability” (“Writer’s Project“; Croly 1011-14; Haarsager 265). Typescript: “primal” Sarah Sophia Chase Platt Decker (1852-1912): vigorous participant in successful Colorado suffrage campaign, 1893; president, Woman’s Club of Denver, 1894, undertaking vacation-school classes for children, municipal civil service reform, cleaner streets; elected vice-president, General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, 1898; president, 1904-08; advocated activism over study, remarking to GFWC meeting in Denver, 1904: “Dante is dead. He has been dead for several centuries, and I think it is time that we dropped the study of his Inferno and turned our attention to our own”; member, National Child Labor Committee; strong advocate of conservation, only woman invited to President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1908 conference on subject; Colorado Board of Charities and Correction, 1898-1912, implemented penal reforms; spoken of as possible U.S. Senate candidate, 1912 (Rinehart; Haarsager 295). Typescript: “winter” The third verse of “Ho! Reapers of Life’s Harvest,” words and music by Isaac B. Woodbury (1819-1858). One of James A. Garfield’s favorite hymns, it was sung at his funeral, following his assassination in 1881.
The following year, and four months before Oregon men would vote on an equal suffrage amendment, the N.A.W.S.A. and Scott Duniway both returned to Washington, D.C. As might be expected under these circumstances, Abigail here reports on progress in Oregon and the prospects for success in June. She describes the behind-the-scenes campaign being waged, a […]
The following year, and four months before Oregon men would vote on an equal suffrage amendment, the N.A.W.S.A. and Scott Duniway both returned to Washington, D.C. As might be expected under these circumstances, Abigail here reports on progress in Oregon and the prospects for success in June. She describes the behind-the-scenes campaign being waged, a “hunt” so “still” that she refuses to reveal the identities of its male supporters. Interestingly, Scott Duniway does not discuss the upcoming election until quite late. The first three-quarters of her address is a narrative of woman’s progress that strikes several familiar themes. It reiterates that the Pacific Northwest is a special region with a unique destiny, in which equal rights for women can flourish. It celebrates the inevitable advance of progress, including the progressive enlightenment that equal rights portend. And it argues, in particularly clear terms, that the pioneer women of the region have earned these rights. While these themes arguably appealed to the nobler instincts of (i.e., flattered) her regional audiences, they well may have struck Eastern audiences as provincial, even insulting. Possibly sensing this problem, Abigail modifies her treatment here by reinterpreting “progress.” She analyzes women’s changing fortunes in marriage and work in the modern era, changes wrought by the industrialization and urbanization of the late nineteenth century (and changes with which Eastern audiences could identify, perhaps even more than Western ones). In a world “out of joint,” she argues, the shopworn rationales for woman’s sphere no longer fit reality. This also was a time of change for N.A.W.S.A.. This convention would be Susan B. Anthony’s last as president, and she would celebrate her eightieth birthday the day after it adjourned; a pragmatically-minded younger generation, notably Carrie Lane Chapman Catt, who would succeed Anthony as president, and Anna Howard Shaw, increasingly would determine the organization’s direction. Fittingly, Scott Duniway–who by now was 65 herself–concludes with remarks directed to her mentor and friend of nearly thirty years. Yet, at this point Abigail had been issuing confident predictions of success in the Pacific Northwest for at least twenty-seven years. The new leadership, whose patience was wearing thin, would be watching Oregon closely. The text is taken from Scott Duniway’s autobiography, Path Breaking.1 The speech also was reprinted in the Portland Evening Telegram (February 13, 1900).2 Minor discrepancies between the two<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_3_74" id="identifier_3_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Minor confusion attends the dating of this speech. Path Breaking says that it was delivered on February 14. However, History of Woman Suffrage records that it was given on “Monday evening,” which was the 12th (4: 363); Evening Telegram coverage on February 13 confirms.">3 are noted as follows: “[]”: in ET only “<>”: in PB only The Paradise of the Pacific Northwest, from whose summer lands and sun-down seas I have traveled four thousand miles to greet this brilliant gathering, was, until within the past few years, so remote in time, as well as in distance, from the older settled portions of this North American continent, that nobody living outside of our great bailiwick, except Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_4_74" id="identifier_4_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">4, had discovered the woman’s side of our progressive history, with which she became acquainted by personal contact in 1871.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_5_74" id="identifier_5_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="At Scott Duniway’s invitation and urging, Anthony canvassed the Pacific Northwest in 1871; Scott Duniway was her business manager, making arrangements for speaking engagements, and delivered speeches of introduction (Edwards, Sowing).">5 But even Miss Anthony found on reaching our shores, nearly 30 years ago, that the awakened woman of the latter half of the 19th century had, [shortly] prior to her advent, discovered herself. When the historic expedition of discovery, headed by Lewis<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_6_74" id="identifier_6_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146).">6 and Clark<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_7_74" id="identifier_7_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55).">7, began its famous journey of exploration in 1804, it started westward from a point east of the Mississippi river8, and extended its transcontinental travels through the almost unknown country now known as the Middle West, till it came9, at last, to Oregon, leaving its families at home. The results of that important journey will remain through all time, to mark the tracks it left upon this nation’s topographical and commercial history. But, of the ultimate results of their researches, the men who managed it had no dream; still less did they imagine that, ere the dawn of another century, the co-existence, and necessary co-association, of wives and mothers in all the great and small affairs of life would echo back, across the Rocky Mountains, and from under the shadows of our own sea-bathed Sierras, the fact that the most important discovery of the century had been made when the woman of the great West discovered herself. If Lewis and Clark and their no less intrepid companions were with us in the flesh today, they would see vast armies of men, as valorous and adventurous as themselves, still engaged in making new discoveries in the physical geography of the United States. And they would see these modern Argonauts, reaching out, guided by a destiny they could not foresee or fathom, to raise the standard of individual and collective liberty in the gem-studded waters of the Pacific Ocean and the Asiatic seas. Then, in turning the searchlight of their expanded vision northward, they would see yet other companies of men, reaching out into the hyperborean altitudes of remote Alaska, accompanied (as Lewis and Clark’s expedition ought to have been) by mothers, wives and daughters, who are proving themselves as strong in endurance and as intrepid in danger as their fathers, husbands and sons. They would see, too, no matter whether they turned their searchlight, from their viewpoint, toward the East or West, that whether the modern adventurer had pitched his tent upon the granite heights of Sumpter10, or toward the South to the tree-clad hills of Oregon’s Bohemian district11;<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_12_74" id="identifier_12_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="ET renders this as: “And they would see, no matter whether they turned the searchlight toward the East, where the modern adventurer pitches his tent upon the granite heights of Sumpter, or toward the south to the tree-clad hills of Oregon’s Bohemian district;”">12 no matter whether they bivouacked among the frozen crags of Chilkoot pass13, or on the humid borders of Cape Nome14; no matter if they camped under the mountain[’s] edges of modern Skagway15, or rested at Metlakahtla16, <that> the virtue of the forest maiden would not be disturbed as of yore–nor would the dusky wife of the aboriginal man be tempted to populate the new world with half-caste children, to become the Ishmaelites17 of new generations, like the son of one Argonaut I have in mind, who, when asked, after being convicted of murder, to state why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, turned savagely upon his pious father and cursed him roundly for having married an Indian woman. When I was asked to include in my remarks, tonight, a brief recital of the progress made during the century by the mothers of the race, in the far-off corner of our continent from which I come, these facts crowded themselves upon me for expression; hence this introduction. Nowhere else, upon this planet, are the inalienable rights of women as much appreciated as on the newly settled borders of the<se> United States. Men have had opportunities, in our remote countries, to see the worth of the civilized woman, who came with them, or among them, to new settlements, after the Indian woman’s day. And they have seen her, not as the parasitic woman who inherits wealth, or the equally selfish woman who lives in idleness upon her husband’s toil, but as their helpmate, companion, counsellor and fellow-homemaker, rejoicing with them in the names they have earned together, and in the sons and daughters they have reared, in the hope that each would follow, in the other’s steps, the good old plodding paths of18 industry and peace. But in spite of theories or regrets, the world is moving, and woman is moving with it–not always, maybe, in the best chosen paths, for we are no wiser than our brothers–but always moving onward, in some direction, toward a higher goal. There came a time in Oregon, in the days when Washington, Montana and Idaho were as yet a part of Oregon’s territory, when men said to the intrepid women who were helping them to subdue the wilderness, “You shall be endowed with property rights of your own, other than those dependent upon the meager possibilities of gift, devise and inheritance.” And they bestowed upon women, under an act of congress, originated by themselves, great tracts of virgin acres, making freeholders of our women pioneers. During the limited period of the early “fifties,” while this act, known as the donation land law<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_19_74" id="identifier_19_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">19, was in force, large numbers of married women joined their husbands in Oregon, and availing themselves of their opportunity, became original owners of the soil; and it is safe to say, that, such is <every sane> woman’s innate love of home, not to speak of her oftentimes inordinate desire to possess a home of her own, that if the law had not been repealed unto this day, there need not be a resident man in all [of] the states of the Pacific Northwest, of which Oregon was the mother, who would not today be in joint possession, with his faithful family, of an abode having its foundation in the soil, from which no speculator could dislodge him. Woman always was and always will be, the best and truest friend of man. And I say again, as I have often said before, “God bless the men! We couldn’t do without them if we would; we wouldn’t if we could.” And yet, it is well known that the very best men are not always the most prosperous. I have here a copy of the transactions of the Ninth Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association, in which I find the following testimonial from the pen of Hon. Jesse Applegate<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_20_74" id="identifier_20_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1888): covered wagon pioneer, surveyor, legislator, publicist; born Henry County, Kentucky; deputy surveyor, St. Louis, Missouri; captain of “cow column” in “Great Migration,” 1843; instrumental in opening Southern Route into Oregon, 1846; influential in revising Provisional government, 1845, in shaping Oregon as Territory, 1849, and as member of State Constitutional convention, 1857; Whig, then Republican; moved from Willamette Valley to farm in Umpqua Valley, 1849; assembling good library, became known as writer on public issues and as “Sage of Yoncalla” (Corning 9-10; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 233).">20, to the memory of his faithful wife21, who died in 1881. Mr. Applegate says: “She was a safe counsellor, for her untaught instincts were truer and safer rules of conduct than my better informed judgment. Had I oftener followed her advice her pilgrimage on earth might have been happier; at least, her strong desire to make all happy around her would not have been cramped by extreme penury.” Ah, many and many have been the women of my bailiwick, who, like Mrs. Applegate, have “gone to their graves in deep penury,” whose “untaught instincts,” if they had been possessed of equal rights before the law, would have accompanied their “strong desire to make their husbands and all around them happy and prosperous,”–a desire that could have been gratified to their heart’s content, if their lives had not been cramped by poverty,22 through the political23 suppression of the “untaught instincts” that come to woman as the gift24 from God, <though often denied her by the laws of man.> In an address made by myself before the Pioneer Society at its tenth anniversary<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_25_74" id="identifier_25_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway borrows more than she acknowledges here. Her punctuation notwithstanding, this entire paragraph, and the paragraph that precedes it, substantially repeat the beginning of her address to the Oregon Pioneer Association of eighteen years prior.">25, I said, <alluding to the foregoing incident, and I repeat it here>: “It was a tardy recognition of a noble woman’s worth that brought forth the deep wail of regret that I have quoted. But no tongue or pen can depict the hopeless anguish of the bereaved husband, who frankly confessed, in his hour of desolation, that ‘her life might have been longer and happier’ if ‘he had oftener followed her advice.’” There never lived a kindlier, manlier man than Jesse Applegate, whose great bereavement opened his blinded understanding and made him, ever after, to the day of his death, an uncompromising equal suffragist, whose many relatives are now following his example; and if, with his great soul and manly goodness of heart, he was so unjust to the best and dearest friend God ever gives to man, what shall we say of the lives of many–alas26, how many–other women, with husbands less noble than he, whose toil has brought them no recompense, very little appreciation and far less of liberty? In former times, every woman, no matter how lowly, possessed some sort of a home in which she was always toiling. She was the world’s first crude manufacturer, the world’s first homemaker; and she still desires, always, above everything else, to be her own homekeeper. But the world is changing front. Her spindle and her loom are gone. Steel and steam have despoiled her of the primitive means of livelihood which kept her comfortable, busy and content. Still, she must earn, or help to earn, a livelihood. Very few men possess the Midas touch that turns the things they handle into gold. The woman who “keeps boarders for company” is a close second to the wife who “makes dresses for diversion,” or “teaches school for recreation,” or goes out washing “for amusement.” These words are not spoken in disparagement of the many men who are financial failures, nor would I reflect in any way upon the far lesser number who possess the Midas touch. I am simply stating facts germane to the question at issue, through the observance of which our border statesmen have grown both just and wise. Our pioneer women had not long been property holders before they became taxpayers. Then, gradually, the truth dawned upon them, as they toiled to pay the tax-gatherer, that “taxation without representation is tyranny,” and “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” By and by the son of the pioneer grew up and left the farm, with its old-fashioned, meager equipments, which satisfied the good old father, who, while he lived, had tried in vain to curb the aspirations of the boy. And the son became an inventor, an actor, a speculator, a printer, a publisher, <a lawyer, a miner, a preacher, a teacher,> a doctor, a prize-fighter, a soldier, a banker, a broker, an editor, a politician, a merchant–an anything but a plodding, half-way tiller of the soil his parents loved. Then the daughter, finding the young man had left the farm, came also to the city, and began to crowd her brother in the race for livelihood. The young man co-operated with his fellows and built a clubhouse–and still the maiden was alone. But she would work cheaper than he, chiefly because she could not run life’s race with him except in ruinous competition. So she lived in a 7 by 9 room with an oil stove and a folding-bed; and more and more she crowded him to the wall. And it was a life of independence compared to that which she had left. Her meager wage sufficed for food and clothes and shelter. She had discovered herself, and for a time she was satisfied. She was not compelled to marry from mercenary motives, and would not wed a coronet unless love crowned the contract and cleanliness of character, equal to her own, accompanied the nuptial bond. And so it has gone on and on, until another stage in her development has come. And, like the bird, which, tethered at the end of a short line, rejoices in its enlarged circuit when the line is lengthened, until at last nothing will satisfy it but freedom altogether, the young woman has tried her partial emancipation from old-time environments; and now, she is no longer satisfied. She sits alone at night in her little chamber and watches the career of her brother, upon whom there are fastened no political fetters, and sees him reach the United States Senate, or become the president of a bank, or the head of a great department store. She watches a sister, who became the parasitic wife of him of the Midas touch, and beholds her, sheltered in a gilded mansion, between which and herself there is a great gulf fixed; or she reads of her as presiding languidly in her palace, at a meeting called to oppose the political liberties of such toiling women as herself. She cannot have a gilded or even an humble home, for herself, because there is no man left to marry her, and her wages hardly support her daily existence. So she says, “What means that favored woman’s wealth to me? This box wherein I sleep is not a home! I toil at half wages, and I am ostracized from the society in which my favored sister and brother shine. I have no hope in posterity, for I cannot marry. But I must live, and I am not content!” So she is calling to her brother bachelor in the United States Senate, or her married brother in the Hall of Representatives, and to all men in the ballot booths of Oregon, saying, “Men and brethren! The times are out of joint! Old things have passed away, but not all things have become new. There are no fetters on you! Why should we wear manacles?” When you say, “Keep to your home,” she is compelled, alas, to answer that she has no home to keep! When you remind her that “marriage is her proper sphere,” she is confronted with the fact that the modern bachelor is not a marrying man. So she quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_27_74" id="identifier_27_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).">27 and Susan B. Anthony, and Olive Schreiner<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_28_74" id="identifier_28_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Olive (Emilie Albertina) Schreiner (1855-1920): writer, born in South Africa; worked as governess in England, (1881-89) while writing successful The Story of an African Farm, 1883, the first sustained, imaginative work in English to come from Africa; later became passionate propagandist for woman’s rights, pro-Boer loyalty, and pacifism, as in Woman and Labour, 1911.">28 and Charlotte Perkins Gilman<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_29_74" id="identifier_29_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman (1860-1935): author, editor, and lecturer on social issues, influenced by British Fabian socialists; her major work, Women and Economics, 1898, an argument for economic independence for women, was published two years before Scott Duniway’s speech; edited her own magazine, Forerunner, 1909-16 (Degler; Endres, “Forerunner”). ET refers to her as “Charlotte Perkins Stetson”; her unhappy marriage to Charles Stetson had ended (by divorce) in 1894, but she would not remarry (to George Houghton Gilman) until four months after this speech.">29, in her dreams, and repairs the next morning to her schoolroom, where she teaches the Declaration of Independence to a class of 50 girls and less than half a score of boys! Among married women and sweet girl graduates, the attempt to make the best of their present environment within the limited circle bounded by their strained lariats results in the formation of women’s clubs.30 And while, as yet, these institutions are mere travesties upon the clubs of men, they do suffice to ease somewhat the tension of their tethers, which many of them are unconsciously, but none the less certainly, striving to snap in twain, with every prospect of success. I [have] now come to my reasons for heading my address with the inspiring caption, “Success in Sight!” The never-fettered men of Oregon are becoming as weary as ourselves of these times that are out of joint. So they have submitted, by the vote of their representatives in the legislature, an amendment to our state constitution, in which they say, “No person shall hereafter be prohibited from voting on account of sex.” This amendment they propose to ratify at the coming June election. And, while we shall miss, in the campaign now pending, the powerful aid of the late lamented Senator<s Mitchell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_31_74" id="identifier_31_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="John Hipple Mitchell (1835-1905): born Washington County, Pennsylvania; came to Oregon, 1860; Portland city attorney, 1860; city council, 1861; state senator, 1862-66; U.S. Senator, 1873-79, 1885-97, 1901-05; Republican; charged with financial dishonesty, bigamy, living under an assumed name and having deserted a wife and children in Pennsylvania, he obtained a divorce from his deserted wife and legalized his assumed name, and the charges were quashed; died while appealing his conviction for bribery in land fraud prosecutions. Mitchell was Scott Duniway’s chief political ally and she defended him in the face of damning revelations, thereby becoming embroiled in “one of the most vitriolic political wrangles in Oregon history” (Corning 167-68; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 77-80: Moynihan, Rebel 173-74; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 104).">31 and> Dolph<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_32_74" id="identifier_32_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135).">32, the financial backing and manly votes of Hon. W. S. Ladd<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_33_74" id="identifier_33_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Sargent Ladd (1826-1893): prominent Front St. merchant, banker, philanthropist; born Holland, Vermont; came to Portland, 1851; sold liquor and consigned goods, 1852; elected to city council, 1853; erected first brick building in Portland, 1853; mayor, 1854; treasurer, Portland Academy and Female Seminary, 1854; with Charles E. Tilton, established Ladd & Tilton, first bank north of San Francisco, in Portland, 1859; Taylor St. Methodist Church, 1867; established bank at Salem, 1869; extensive farming and flour milling interests; promoted iron works, Oswego; major owner, Oregon Steam Navigation Co. and Oregon Railway and Navigation Co.; buried River View Cemetery, where grave was opened and body stolen for ransom, 1897; recovered body was reburied and grave was filled with cement (Corning 138; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 73-77; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 298, 2: 272, 277; “Our Founders”).">33 and J. B. Montgomery<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_34_74" id="identifier_34_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Boyce Montgomery: Captain of U.S. sloop of war Portsmouth, who rescued Judge J. Quinn Thornton (who had been stranded in San Juan, Lower California, on his way to Washington, D.C.) and brought him around Cape Horn to the Eastern seaboard, enabling Judge Thornton to complete his work helping to create the Oregon Territory in 1848 (Corning 168-69).">34, of revered memory; the influence35 of Hon. Henry Failing<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_36_74" id="identifier_36_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1834-1898): pioneer Portland merchant, banker, and politician; born New York City; son of Josiah Failing; educated in public schools; came to Portland, 1851; took over family wholesaling business, 1853; married Emily Phelps Corbett, 1858; avid Republican on national issues but nonpartisan in local politics; trustee, First Baptist Church for thirty years; elected mayor of Portland, 1864; re-elected 1865, 1872; president, First National Bank, 1869-98; Portland Library Board, 1872, president, 1893; University of Oregon Board of Regents, 1882, president, 1893; chair, Portland Water Co., 1886-98; Port of Portland Commission, 1891-97; president, Northern Pacific Terminal Company; trustee and treasurer, Pacific University, deaf-mute school of Salem, and Children’s Home; director and treasurer, Oregon Pioneer Association (Corning 82; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 33-37; “Our Founders“; “Henry Failing“).">36, <and his lamented father, Josiah Failing, Esq.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_37_74" id="identifier_37_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1806-1877): born Fort Plain, New York; moved to New York City as young man; married Henrietta Ellison; sailed with sons Henry and Edward from New York to Portland, where they opened a lucrative wholesale business, 1851; Baptist church leader; principal architect of first Portland school district and tax with which to build a schoolhouse, 1851; mayor of Portland, 1853-54; Portland school board, 1856-61, 1864-67; delegate, Republican national conventions, 1864, 1868; known as “dean of Front Street” (Corning 82; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 47-48; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 272, 5: 225-26).">37,> who have38 passed to the skies; while we no more hear the honored voice of Oregon’s Chief Justice39, M. P. Deady<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_40_74" id="identifier_40_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Matthew Paul Deady (1824-1893): born Talbot County, Maryland; moved to Wheeling, Virginia, 1828; educated in Wheeling and Fredericktown, Maryland; moved to Belmont County, Ohio, 1838; worked on family farm and learned blacksmithing; school at Barnesville, Ohio, Academy; admitted to bar, Supreme Court of Ohio, 1847; came to Oregon, 1849; taught and practiced law at Lafayette, Yamhill County, 1850-53; elected to legislature, 1850; president, territorial council, 1851-52; married Lucy Henderson, 1852; associate justice, territorial supreme court, 1853-59; representing Douglas County, presided over state constitutional convention, 1857; U.S. District Judge for Oregon, 1859; moved to Portland, 1860; chiefly responsible for Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, 1860-64, and code of Oregon statutes, 1864; held terms of U.S. Circuit Court, San Francisco, 1867-68; president, Board of Regents, State University, 1873-93 (Corning 70-71; Shuck 85-109; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 275).">40, raised in our behalf, nor the encouraging words of the long line of our governors who have gone, in the fullness of time, to their long, long home, we have scores <and scores> of leading men yet left to speak for us, whose names I now withhold for prudential reasons, lest, as was done one time by women in the Territory of Washington, the enemy be forewarned and their defeat invited and secured, through the caucus[es] and conventions of the political machine. For the same reason, I resist the strong temptation to name, in this connection, the many associations and fraternities of men who have signified by their votes, in their different orders <and fraternities>, their determination to give us their affirmative votes at the ballot-box next June. But I do take pride in mentioning, with no fear of disaster, the Emergency Corps and Red Cross Society of our State, organized during the mobilization of our volunteers, <during our war with Spain,41 > and maintained in active working order as long as there was work for them to do. It would, indeed, humiliate our returned veterans, were they to see these noble women defeated at the June election. These women, who, though tethered42 at the end of the governmental lariat, have royally earned their liberties by toiling to feed and comfort the soldiers, to whom women had given life, exhibiting such largeness of liberty and such statesmanship in administration of the army43 affairs as has challenged the admiration, not only of our own returning volunteers from Asiatic seas, but <of> those from Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Dakota and Washington, all of whom were cheered and feasted, and sent on their way rejoicing, amid the glad acclaim of music, guns and bells. And the homeless wife, and sweet girl graduate are hearing all this and taking courage. They do not want to rule over men44. It would be useless for any woman but an anti-suffragist to attempt to control men’s votes45, and none other tries. Our46 cry is for an equal chance with man in the great arena of work. Not many of us47 could be office-holders, and very few, in any State where women vote, aspire to office. The men of Oregon are tired of seeing their wives and daughters rated in the political category of idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen. A delightful calm has settled over our political arena, but <we believe> it is the calmness that precedes the success that is in sight. I wish that I had time to tell you of the mighty possibilities of fair young Oregon. Her capacity for homes is as unlimited as is the azure of her skies on her fairest days. Her people are prosperous and progressive, and their spirits are as free from fads as the air they breathe. They do not like professional agitators, but they love liberty. To you, Miss Anthony, our honored leader and guest, whom it is my privilege to salute, in this hour of your serene young age, I say, in conclusion, that my chief desire and prayer to God, on this great occasion, is that the government of the<se> United States shall proclaim you a free and independent citizen, as you of right ought to be, at least long enough to get used to your liberty, before you are called to the skies. Your life has been a noble example of what Ella Wheeler Wilcox<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9csuccess-in-sight%e2%80%9d-february-12-1900/#footnote_48_74" id="identifier_48_74" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1855-1919): poet and journalist; born Johnstown Center, Wisconsin; educated University of Wisconsin; moved to Connecticut and New York after marriage to Robert M. Wilcox, 1884; reputation made when Chicago firm refused to publish “immoral” collection of emotional love poems, Poems of Passion, 1883; syndicated columnist of prose and poetry; covered death of Queen Victoria, writing immensely popular “The Queen’s Last Ride”; belittled and ignored by serious literati; interested in Spiritualism and Theosophy (Baird; Who was Who 1344). This bit of verse concludes a short essay entitled “Hate No One,” in which she condemns hate as a poison, urging readers to pity adversaries and competitors instead, and to work for their improvement. Only Scott Duniway’s punctuation and substitution of “Tis” for “And” depart from the original (Wilcox 249-51).">48 calls “the splendid discontent of God,” <which I am honored by repeating, ere my allotted time is up:> The splendid discontent of God With chaos, made the world, Set suns in place, and filled all space With stars that shone and whirled. If apes had been content with tails, No thing of higher shape Had come to birth; the king of earth Today would be an ape. ‘Tis from the discontent of man The world’s best49 progress springs. Then feed the flame (from God it came) Until you mount on wings. NOTES 169-78. A copy of which is contained in folder “Duniway family. Clippings. Duniway, Abigail S.,” Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. Minor confusion attends the dating of this speech. Path Breaking says that it was delivered on February 14. However, History of Woman Suffrage records that it was given on “Monday evening,” which was the 12th (4: 363); Evening Telegram coverage on February 13 confirms. Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). At Scott Duniway’s invitation and urging, Anthony canvassed the Pacific Northwest in 1871; Scott Duniway was her business manager, making arrangements for speaking engagements, and delivered speeches of introduction (Edwards, Sowing). Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146). William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55). Near St. Louis, Missouri. ET: “and came” A town in Baker County, in eastern Oregon, bordering Idaho. A mining district in eastern Lane County. ET renders this as: “And they would see, no matter whether they turned the searchlight toward the East, where the modern adventurer pitches his tent upon the granite heights of Sumpter, or toward the south to the tree-clad hills of Oregon’s Bohemian district;” A difficult pass in the Klondike region of Alaska. A cape on the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. A city in the Alaskan panhandle, north of Juneau. Metlakatla, a town on the southern tip of the Alaskan peninsula, on the Clarence Strait. Outcasts, after Ishmael, son of Abraham and Hagar, who, at Sarah’s insistence, was made an outcast (with his mother) (Gen. 16:12). ET: “in” An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). (1811-1888): covered wagon pioneer, surveyor, legislator, publicist; born Henry County, Kentucky; deputy surveyor, St. Louis, Missouri; captain of “cow column” in “Great Migration,” 1843; instrumental in opening Southern Route into Oregon, 1846; influential in revising Provisional government, 1845, in shaping Oregon as Territory, 1849, and as member of State Constitutional convention, 1857; Whig, then Republican; moved from Willamette Valley to farm in Umpqua Valley, 1849; assembling good library, became known as writer on public issues and as “Sage of Yoncalla” (Corning 9-10; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 233). Cynthia Ann Parker Applegate (?-1881): native of Tennessee; married Jesse Applegate, 1831, settling first on farm in Osage Valley, Missouri; twelve children (Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16). ET: “if their lives ‘had not been cramped by extreme penury,’” ET: “through outside” ET: “as bequests” Scott Duniway borrows more than she acknowledges here. Her punctuation notwithstanding, this entire paragraph, and the paragraph that precedes it, substantially repeat the beginning of her address to the Oregon Pioneer Association of eighteen years prior. ET: “also” (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). Olive (Emilie Albertina) Schreiner (1855-1920): writer, born in South Africa; worked as governess in England, (1881-89) while writing successful The Story of an African Farm, 1883, the first sustained, imaginative work in English to come from Africa; later became passionate propagandist for woman’s rights, pro-Boer loyalty, and pacifism, as in Woman and Labour, 1911. Charlotte Anna Perkins Stetson Gilman (1860-1935): author, editor, and lecturer on social issues, influenced by British Fabian socialists; her major work, Women and Economics, 1898, an argument for economic independence for women, was published two years before Scott Duniway’s speech; edited her own magazine, Forerunner, 1909-16 (Degler; Endres, “Forerunner”). ET refers to her as “Charlotte Perkins Stetson”; her unhappy marriage to Charles Stetson had ended (by divorce) in 1894, but she would not remarry (to George Houghton Gilman) until four months after this speech. See “Eminent Women I Have Met.” John Hipple Mitchell (1835-1905): born Washington County, Pennsylvania; came to Oregon, 1860; Portland city attorney, 1860; city council, 1861; state senator, 1862-66; U.S. Senator, 1873-79, 1885-97, 1901-05; Republican; charged with financial dishonesty, bigamy, living under an assumed name and having deserted a wife and children in Pennsylvania, he obtained a divorce from his deserted wife and legalized his assumed name, and the charges were quashed; died while appealing his conviction for bribery in land fraud prosecutions. Mitchell was Scott Duniway’s chief political ally and she defended him in the face of damning revelations, thereby becoming embroiled in “one of the most vitriolic political wrangles in Oregon history” (Corning 167-68; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 77-80: Moynihan, Rebel 173-74; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 104). Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135). William Sargent Ladd (1826-1893): prominent Front St. merchant, banker, philanthropist; born Holland, Vermont; came to Portland, 1851; sold liquor and consigned goods, 1852; elected to city council, 1853; erected first brick building in Portland, 1853; mayor, 1854; treasurer, Portland Academy and Female Seminary, 1854; with Charles E. Tilton, established Ladd & Tilton, first bank north of San Francisco, in Portland, 1859; Taylor St. Methodist Church, 1867; established bank at Salem, 1869; extensive farming and flour milling interests; promoted iron works, Oswego; major owner, Oregon Steam Navigation Co. and Oregon Railway and Navigation Co.; buried River View Cemetery, where grave was opened and body stolen for ransom, 1897; recovered body was reburied and grave was filled with cement (Corning 138; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 73-77; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 298, 2: 272, 277; “Our Founders”). James Boyce Montgomery: Captain of U.S. sloop of war Portsmouth, who rescued Judge J. Quinn Thornton (who had been stranded in San Juan, Lower California, on his way to Washington, D.C.) and brought him around Cape Horn to the Eastern seaboard, enabling Judge Thornton to complete his work helping to create the Oregon Territory in 1848 (Corning 168-69). ET: “hearty help” (1834-1898): pioneer Portland merchant, banker, and politician; born New York City; son of Josiah Failing; educated in public schools; came to Portland, 1851; took over family wholesaling business, 1853; married Emily Phelps Corbett, 1858; avid Republican on national issues but nonpartisan in local politics; trustee, First Baptist Church for thirty years; elected mayor of Portland, 1864; re-elected 1865, 1872; president, First National Bank, 1869-98; Portland Library Board, 1872, president, 1893; University of Oregon Board of Regents, 1882, president, 1893; chair, Portland Water Co., 1886-98; Port of Portland Commission, 1891-97; president, Northern Pacific Terminal Company; trustee and treasurer, Pacific University, deaf-mute school of Salem, and Children’s Home; director and treasurer, Oregon Pioneer Association (Corning 82; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 33-37; “Our Founders“; “Henry Failing“). (1806-1877): born Fort Plain, New York; moved to New York City as young man; married Henrietta Ellison; sailed with sons Henry and Edward from New York to Portland, where they opened a lucrative wholesale business, 1851; Baptist church leader; principal architect of first Portland school district and tax with which to build a schoolhouse, 1851; mayor of Portland, 1853-54; Portland school board, 1856-61, 1864-67; delegate, Republican national conventions, 1864, 1868; known as “dean of Front Street” (Corning 82; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 47-48; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 272, 5: 225-26). ET: “recently” ET: “great jurist” Matthew Paul Deady (1824-1893): born Talbot County, Maryland; moved to Wheeling, Virginia, 1828; educated in Wheeling and Fredericktown, Maryland; moved to Belmont County, Ohio, 1838; worked on family farm and learned blacksmithing; school at Barnesville, Ohio, Academy; admitted to bar, Supreme Court of Ohio, 1847; came to Oregon, 1849; taught and practiced law at Lafayette, Yamhill County, 1850-53; elected to legislature, 1850; president, territorial council, 1851-52; married Lucy Henderson, 1852; associate justice, territorial supreme court, 1853-59; representing Douglas County, presided over state constitutional convention, 1857; U.S. District Judge for Oregon, 1859; moved to Portland, 1860; chiefly responsible for Codes of Civil and Criminal Procedure, 1860-64, and code of Oregon statutes, 1864; held terms of U.S. Circuit Court, San Francisco, 1867-68; president, Board of Regents, State University, 1873-93 (Corning 70-71; Shuck 85-109; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 275). April-December, 1898, triggered principally by the mysterious explosion of the U.S.S. Maine, in the harbor of Havana, Cuba (“Woman in Oregon History” n. 20). ET: “fettered” ET: “corps’” ET: “man” ET, more simply: “attempt it” ET: “But their” ET: “them” (1855-1919): poet and journalist; born Johnstown Center, Wisconsin; educated University of Wisconsin; moved to Connecticut and New York after marriage to Robert M. Wilcox, 1884; reputation made when Chicago firm refused to publish “immoral” collection of emotional love poems, Poems of Passion, 1883; syndicated columnist of prose and poetry; covered death of Queen Victoria, writing immensely popular “The Queen’s Last Ride”; belittled and ignored by serious literati; interested in Spiritualism and Theosophy (Baird; Who was Who 1344). This bit of verse concludes a short essay entitled “Hate No One,” in which she condemns hate as a poison, urging readers to pity adversaries and competitors instead, and to work for their improvement. Only Scott Duniway’s punctuation and substitution of “Tis” for “And” depart from the original (Wilcox 249-51). ET: “great”
Regarding political–and rhetorical–strategy, Scott Duniway often disagreed bitterly with other suffrage leaders, particularly Eastern women officers of the national suffrage organizations. Because the Pacific Northwest was a special place (a theme invoked again here), she believed, special strategies or persuasive appeals were required. In particular, Scott Duniway generally resisted expediency-based rationales for suffrage in favor […]
Regarding political–and rhetorical–strategy, Scott Duniway often disagreed bitterly with other suffrage leaders, particularly Eastern women officers of the national suffrage organizations. Because the Pacific Northwest was a special place (a theme invoked again here), she believed, special strategies or persuasive appeals were required. In particular, Scott Duniway generally resisted expediency-based rationales for suffrage in favor of arguments from principle. Justifying the right to vote by predicting what women would do once enfranchised, she argued, would only threaten men and make suffrage unattainable. Instead, she claimed, woman suffrage must be justified on the same grounds that men believe their own suffrage is justified, i.e., as a right. Although a life-long temperance advocate, Scott Duniway feared most the influence of overzealous prohibitionists. She was convinced that men would refuse to grant women the right to vote for fear of losing their right to drink. Throughout her career, she attempted to keep these two issues separate in the public mind, enduring repeated, acrimonious, and unfair charges that she had “sold out” to liquor interests.1 “How to Win the Ballot” is Scott Duniway’s most thorough defense of argument from principle and her most explicit statement of the rhetorical assumptions that guided her persuasive efforts: She analyzes the suffragists’ audience–men–and posits both appropriate and inappropriate appeals with which to convince this audience, including the strategic importance of humor. On the penultimate evening of the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention, meeting in the “handsome” St. Cecilia Club House in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and following a Dvorak piano solo “brilliantly rendered” by Miss Elenora Bushnell, Susan B. Anthony introduced her long-time friend and co-worker. Abigail strode to the lectern, politely but firmly to rebuke a segment of “the National’s” leadership and methods.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_2_71" id="identifier_2_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="It bears remembering that these debates were not merely philosophical. Before month’s end, Carry Amelia Moore Nation would begin in earnest her campaign of “hatchetations,” smashing up ill-disguised “pharmacies” and “joints” across legally “dry” Kansas; at year’s end, she would spend two weeks in jail for wrecking the luxurious bar in Wichita’s Hotel Carey, becoming a national celebrity (Messbarger).">2 The local press commented, “Mrs. Duniway has a powerful voice, and is not afraid to use it,” and called this “one of the most interesting, eloquent, logical and convincing addresses” of the convention.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_3_71" id="identifier_3_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899, 7 May 1899. Scott Duniway’s role in a controversy earlier that day is noteworthy as well. When Lottie Wilson Jackson of Bay City, Michigan, “so light-complexioned as hardly to suggest a tincture of African blood,” proposed a resolution condemning discriminatory practices in the South, particularly “separate coach” laws, many Southern delegates took offense, provoking a “lively” discussion that grew “quite warm and interesting.” Official history records that this resolution finally was tabled but omits the fact that Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon authored the motion to strike. From a certain point of view, this action is consistent with her eschewing of “isms” of all stripes; yet it also may reflect unfortunate but typical racial attitudes, and certainly reminds that a principle such as the doctrine of natural rights can become entangled within considerations of expediency (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 343; cf. Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899).">3 Abigail evidently was pleased because, about a week later, she wrote to son Clyde that the “Nat’l workers at last accept my attitude toward the prohibition craze, over which we have for 10 years had much controversy.” About half a year later, she reaffirmed, “everything is lovely again.”4 The History of Woman Suffrage offered that the talk contained “much sound sense.”5 The Grand Rapids Sunday Democrat published the speech five days later. It was reprinted in Path Breaking fifteen years later.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_6_71" id="identifier_6_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A. Duniway, Path Breaking 156-68. The polemical 1914 autobiography describes it as “the shortest way at my command for telling many truths that Eastern readers ought to read” (156), and concludes that “its facts appeal, today, with even greater force, to men and women in every state where votes of men are needed to secure the blessings of liberty and responsibility, or the right of self-government for all the people, ‘by no means excluding women’” (168).">6 The two are substantially similar, differing chiefly in punctuation and paragraph definition. Because the Path Breaking version can be found in the public domain, I follow the Democrat in the interest of making it available. Small additions found only in Path Breaking are marked by “<>”, and those only in the Democrat by “[]”; minor alternate word choices appear in footnotes. Coming as I do from the far Pacific, where the sun at night sinks [down] into the sea, to greet a convocation of co-workers from the far Atlantic, where the sun at morn rises out of the sea, and standing here upon the central swell of the Middle West, where the sun at high noon kisses the heaving bosom of the mighty inland sea[s] that answers back to East and West the echoing song of liberty, I realize [anew] the importance of my desire to speak to the entire continent such tempered words as shall help to further unite our common interests in the great work that convenes us. The first fact to be considered, when working to win the ballot, is that there is but one way by which we may hope to obtain it, and that is by and through the affirmative votes of men. We may theorize, organize, appeal, argue, coax, cajole and threaten men till doomsday; we may secure their pettings, praises, flattery and every appearance of acquiescence in our demands; we may believe with all our hearts in the sincerity of their promises to vote as we dictate, but all of this will avail us nothing unless they deposit their affirmative votes in the ballot box. Every man who stops to argue the case as an opponent tells us that he “loves women,” and, while wondering much that he should consider such a declaration necessary, I have always admired the loyal spirit that prompts its utterance. But, gentlemen, and I am proud indeed to see such a fine audience of you here tonight, there is another side to this expression of loyalty. Not only is our movement not instigated in a spirit of warfare between the sexes, but it is engendered altogether in the spirit of harmony, and inter-dependence between men and women, such as was the evident design of the great Creator when He placed fathers, <and> mothers, brothers and sisters in the same home and family. We are glad to be assured that you love women and7 we are doubly glad to be able on every proper occasion8 and in every suitable way to return the compliment. No good equal suffragist will any longer permit you to monopolize all the pretty speeches about the other sex. Every good woman in the world likes men a great deal better than she likes women, and there isn’t a wise woman in all this goodly land who isn’t proud to say so. We like you, gentlemen, and you cannot help it. We couldn’t help it if we would, [and] we wouldn’t help it if we could. You like us also because you cannot help it. God made the sexes to match each other. Show me a woman who doesn’t like men, and I will show you a sour-souled, vinegar-visaged specimen of unfortunate femininity who owes the world an apology for living in it at all and the very best thing she could do for her country, provided she had a country, would be to steal away and die in the company of the man who doesn’t like women. In order to gain the votes of men, so we can win the ballot, we must show them that we are inspired by the same patriotic motives that induce them to prize it. A home without a man in it is only half a home. A government without women in it is only half a government. Man without woman is like one-half of a pair of dislocated shears.9 Woman without man is like the other half of the same disabled implement. “Male and female created He them,” saith the higher law, and to them gave He10 dominion over every living thing upon the earth–except each other. Thirty years ago, when I began my humble efforts for securing the enfranchisement of women, away out upon the singing shores of the Pacific <Sea>, men everywhere imagined, at first, that the movement was intended to deprive them of a modicum of their liberties. They ought to have known this idea was absurd even then, as they have the power never to allow themselves11 to be ruled by women. But they thought <legal> supremacy over them was what women were after, and they met the12 theory with hoarse guffaws of [good-natured] laughter. I had previously had much experience with the genus masculine, not only with my good husband, but with a large family of sons. It is needless for me to tell you, after this confession, that I am not young, and you can see for yourselves that I am no longer handsome. The fact that men for the most part contented themselves in those early days of the suffrage movement with exhibitions of ridicule, I accepted as a good omen. If you wish to convince a man that your opinion is logical and just, you have conquered the outer citadel of his resentment when he throws back his head and opens his mouth to laugh. Show me a solemn visaged voter, with a face as long as the Pentateuch, and I will show you a man with a soul so little that it would have ample room to dance inside of a hollow mustard seed. Having tickled your opponent with a little nonsense, that at first was necessary to arrest his attention, <you must then be careful to hold the ground you have gained.> your next step must be to impress upon <all> men <the fact> that we are not intending to interfere in any way [forceful] with their rights; and all we ask is to be allowed to decide for ourselves <also> as to what our rights shall13 be. They will then very naturally ask, what effect our enfranchisement will have upon their politics? Visions of riotous scenes in political conventions will arise to fill them with apprehension, as the possibility occurs that women, if enfranchised, will only double the vote and augment the uproar. They will recall partisan banquets, at which men have tarried over cups and pipes until they rolled under the table, or were carried off to bed on shutters. Very naturally men everywhere object to seeing reputable women, and especially their own wives, engaged in such excesses. But our mighty men of the Pacific Northwest are troubled very little by these vagaries. They realize as they sleep off the results of their latest political banquet, that at every public function in which their wives participate there is a notable absence of any sort of dissipation. They remember that in former times, before good women had joined them in the mining camps, mountain towns, and on the bachelor farms, <that> such scenes as often14 transpire today at men’s great gatherings, were <once> so common as to excite little comment. It was the advent of good women in the border territories that changed all this, and eliminated the bad women15 from social life, just as the ballot will eventually eliminate the bad woman from political life, where she now [too often] reigns supreme <among men>, having everything her own way. By the very charm of <good> women’s presence, they brought these changes about on the Pacific Coast in social life, and16 men began to wonder how they had endured the old conditions before the women joined them; [and] now, quite naturally, they are learning to apply the17 rule to politics. And so our men of the Pacific coast are not alarmed, as many men are in older18 states, lest women, if allowed to become equal with themselves before the law, will forget their natural duties and natural womanliness. If, however, any man [does] grow19 timid, and exhibits symptoms of alarm, as they sometimes do, even in Oregon, lest the balloted woman will forsake the kitchen sink, at which she has always been protected–without wages–or abandon the cooking stove, the rolling pin, the wash tub and the ironing board at which she has always been shielded–without salary–we remind him that housekeeping and home-making are like everything else, undergoing a complete process of evolution. We show him that there is no more reason why every loaf of bread should be baked in a different kitchen than there is why every bushel of wheat should be ground in a different mill. We show him that the laundry is destined hereafter to keep pace with the threshing machine; the creamery with the spinning jenny and power loom, the fruit cannery with the great flower mill, the dish washer with the steam driven mangle and the bakery with the ready-made clothing store. When women have been voters long enough to have acquired recognition of their <own> equal property rights with men, the servant girl problem will settle itself. When that time comes, there will be no more work left to do in the home than the wife and mother can perform with comfort to herself and household; and the servant girls of today will then find systematic employment in the great factories, where food and clothing are manufactured by rule.20 This evolution has already begun with the woman typewriter. You see her everywhere; pretty, tidy, rosy, with a ribbon or [a] flower at her throat, intent upon her work, and sure to get her pay. Then can the mother for the sake of herself, her husband and children, preserve her health, her beauty, and her mental vigor. Then can she be an adviser in the home, the state, the church and the school, remaining so to a ripe old age. But women can never have the opportunity or the power to achieve these results, except in isolated cases, till they are voters and lawmakers; and never even then, till they have had time to secure by legislation the equal property rights that they have earned with men from the beginning. All evolution proceeds slowly. Women under normal conditions, are evolutionists, and not revolutionists, as is shown by their conduct as voters in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Your ideal, hysterical reformer, whose aim in life is to put men in leading strings like little children, doesn’t hail from any state where women vote. Mary A. Livermore<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_21_71" id="identifier_21_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).">21, at the head of the sanitary commission during our great internecine war; Clara Barton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_22_71" id="identifier_22_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).">22, president of the International23 Red Cross Society, and Oregon’s own Mrs. Creighton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_24_71" id="identifier_24_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Probably Mary Jane McCully Creighton (1844-1920): born Burlington, Iowa; daughter of David and Mary Ann McCully; crossed plains, 1852, settling at Harrisburg, later Salem; married John Creighton, of Union, December, 1868; lived in Union until 1879, when moved to stock ranch in Wallowa County; widowed in 1884 and moved to Salem; moved to Portland, c. 1907; four daughters; died at 76 after four-week illness (Sunday Oregonian 2 May 1920; Oregon Daily Journal 28 Apr. 1920).">24, president of the National White Cross Association <a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_25_71" id="identifier_25_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="White Cross was “a self-supporting American organization which had a large membership throughout the Union, having for its motto, “Truth, Charity and Philanthropy,” and for its emblem cross bandages of white on a field of red. It was founded in 1898 by Mrs. Jane Creighton of Portland, Ore., and its object was the care of wounded and sick American soldiers and sailors, and aid to the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in battle, or died of disease or accident” (Encyclopedia Americana 2: 270).">25, have each proved the capacity of the American woman for rescuing the race from the awful consequences of war; while every soldier proves by the very fact of his existence, that some mother has borne a son at her peril, perhaps to be shot in battle<s that woman might help to avoid>. The very best housekeepers and homemakers in America are among the equal suffrage platform workers, the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal to the contrary notwithstanding. They may know better than to ruin their eyes over Mr. Bok’s<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_26_71" id="identifier_26_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Edward William Bok (1863-1930): born Helder, Netherlands; family emigrated to U.S., 1870; founded Brooklyn Magazine (later Cosmopolitan), 1883; formed a New York-based syndicate service with brother William J. for purpose of increasing female readership of newspapers; syndicated “Bab’s Babble,” written by Isabel A. Mallon and Ella Wheeler Wilcox; launched entire page of syndicated material in 1886, including “Side Talks with Girls,” which he wrote under pseudonym “Ruth Ashmead,” later “Ruth Ashmore”; syndicate eventually reached ninety papers; abandoned syndicate, 1889, to become editor (until 1919) of Ladies Home Journal, which was becoming the most important women’s publication in the U.S. (I. Ross, Ladies 20-21; Mott 4 539-41; “Edward William Bok“) Bok’s idea of women’s news was far too domestic and conservative for women like Scott Duniway. Ishbel Ross comments: “It suited the woman in the home but was scorned by the girls who were beginning to stir about in the larger world” (21).">26 latest fad[s] in “Battenburg” or shatter their nerves over his mental creations in crazy stitches, but they can and do raise men and women, like the sons and daughters of Lucretia Mott<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_27_71" id="identifier_27_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer).">27, Mary A. Livermore, Emily B. Ketcham<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_28_71" id="identifier_28_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 322-23, 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clarey, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907).">28, Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_29_71" id="identifier_29_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).">29, Lily Devereaux Blake<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_30_71" id="identifier_30_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97).">30, Abigail Scott Duniway, Lucy Stone Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_31_71" id="identifier_31_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lucy Stone (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). Given that Stone refused to change her name when she married Henry Browne Blackwell in 1855, Scott Duniway’s inclusion of “Blackwell” here is surprising and, to my knowledge, the only time she does so.">31, Elizabeth Boynton Herbert [sic]<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_32_71" id="identifier_32_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Morrisson Boynton Harbert (1845-1925): born Crawfordsville, Indiana; daughter of William H. Boynton and Abigail Sweetser; educated in female seminary, Oxford, Ohio, and Terra Haute Female College, graduating with honors, 1862; vice-president, Indiana Woman Suffrage Association; married Capt. William Soesby Harbert, 1870, and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she published “Out of Her Sphere” and became active in suffrage movement, responsible for securing “woman’s plank” in state Republican Party platform, 1874; president, Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Chicago, 1874; president, Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, 1876-88, resuming in 1900; edited woman’s department of Inter-Ocean for eight years; board of managers, Girl’s Industrial School, South Evanston, Illinois; organized and seven years president, Woman’s Club of Evanston; president, National Household Economics Association; active in Woman’s Congress; moved to Pasadena, California, prior to 1910; vice-president, Woman’s Civic League of Pasadena and Southern California Woman’s Press Association (Who was Who 518; Willard and Livermore 1: 356-57; History of Woman Suffrage 3: 580, 620-21, 5: 288, 559, 6: 145).">32, Harriet Beecher Stowe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_33_71" id="identifier_33_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“).">33 and Julia Ward Howe<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_34_71" id="identifier_34_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim).">34. [Remember, always, that]35 your most important point, if you hope to win the ballot at all, is to convince the average voter that in seeking your liberties, you are equally anxious that he shall preserve his own. You may drive, or lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. Nor can you lead any man to vote for your enfranchisement till you have first convinced him that by so doing he is not placing you in a position where you may, if you choose, trample upon any of his rights, whether they may be fancied or real, healthful or harmful. Every woman knows she can not rule her [own] husband. The man who would be ruled by his wife wouldn’t36 be worth corralling in the chimney corner, after she had driven him home. What is true of men in the abstract, is equally true of men in the aggregate. I cannot too strongly impress upon you, good sisters, the fact that we will never get the ballot till the crack of doom if we persist in demanding it as a whip with which to scourge the real or apparent vices of the present voting classes. If we can make men willing to be reformed they will then reform themselves. <Here is where woman has, in the last two decades, made her greatest blunder.> Whenever woman37 demands the ballot, not simply because it is her right to possess it, but because by its use she expects to reconstruct the genus man by law, on a basis of her own choosing, she only succeeds in driving nails into the closed coffin lid of her own and other women’s liberties. Men know intuitively that the right to representation in the legislature is a right as inestimable to us as to them; that it is formidable to tyrants only. [But] they do not believe themselves to be tyrants, and will resent the implication that they are such, to the bitter end. They also know that women in giving existence to the soldiers, suffer their full share of the penalties and perils of existence, equaling all the horrors of war. So when they say “women must fight if they vote,” it is easy in the awful glare of the tragedies of the present year<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_38_71" id="identifier_38_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Almost exactly three months earlier, Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped lead an insurrection against Spain with the hope (encouraged by Commodore Dewey) of establishing a Filipino republic, and who felt betrayed by the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S., fomented another rebellion against another imperialist power. It would take two years and several hundred casualties for General Arthur MacArthur and the Army to pacify the archipelago (Morison 3: 122-24).">38, to convince them in the words of Joaquin Miller<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_39_71" id="identifier_39_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1839-1913): poet; California miner, 1855; lived with Shasta Indians, 1857; schoolteacher; lawyer (admitted to bar, 1861); pony express rider; Democratic newspaper editor accused of pro-Southern sympathies; Grant County judge, 1866-70; Songs of the Sierras, 1871, made him famous; newspaper correspondent in Klondike, 1897-98, and during Boxer War in China, 1899 (Corning 166; Powers 229-46).">39, Oregon’s greatest poet, that “The bravest battles that ever are fought, are fought by the mothers of men.”40 When men claim to represent us, it is not difficult if we are always careful not to make them angry, to prove to them that [they don’t.] Men never say, if any woman is accused of crime, “may it please the court and the jury, I represent this woman, punish me.” No man save Jesus of Nazareth, our divinely commissioned elder brother, has ever yet appeared before the bar of God or man, and offered himself as propitiation for the sins, debts or taxes of women. Many good men object to women doing jury duty. They often frighten timid women by saying, “how would you like to be locked up in the jury room with eleven men?” I can’t understand why so many men imagine that if women should once be allowed their right to vote, they should41 never thereafter do anything else but vote, vote, vote, vote. Nor can I comprehend another fancy equally absurd, that just as soon as women are voters they will all be compelled to sit all the time on juries; and every one of those unfortunate jurors will always have as many little children as poor John Rogers<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_42_71" id="identifier_42_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(c. 1500-1555): English reformer; completed and edited Tyndale’s so-called Matthew Bible; first protestant martyr to be burned at the stake by Roman Catholic Queen Mary I (Mary Tudor, a.k.a. “Bloody Mary); with Dutch wife, Adriana Pratt de Weyden, had nine (some sources say eleven) children (“John Rogers (Martyr)“).">42 of historical memory; and no matter what the state of her health, and the needs of her neglected husband, and “nine small children,” etc., she will still be on the jury; and that jury will always be composed of one woman and eleven men. Such assumptions are too absurd for refutation; [and] but for the fact that they sometimes bring out negative votes, we would not notice them. Men and women always have been, and always will be, excused from jury duty–for cause. Again we can never win the ballot by demanding it in the interest of any particular ism, union, party, sect or creed. In our Pacific Northwest, the majority of the voters stand ready to grant us the ballot whenever we demand it on the broad basis of individual and collective liberty for ourselves; and we’ll43 never get it otherwise. Our friends east of the Rocky mountains were amazed and electrified in the autumn of 1883 by the announcement that the legislature of Washington territory had extended the ballot to women. <Less than> four years later, after a few self-imported agitators had made [a] strong attempt to use the women’s ballots for the enforcement of sumptuary legislation, to which the men objected (even while pretending to approve it till they got the women [voters] into a trap) women everywhere were dumb-founded by the action of the politicians of the territory, who retaliated by shutting down the iron gates of a state constitution in the women’s faces, leaving them as ex-voters on the outside of the temple of liberty with their hands tied.44 The men of Washington are not yet over their scare, nor will they be till women have made an [organized] effort to convince them that the eyes of the great majority are now open, and they’ll45 never be entrapped in such a way again. I pray you do not misunderstand me, friends. I wage no war upon any organization, or upon any person’s political or religious faith. Catholics have just as good [a] right to their religious opinions as Protestants. Republicans have just as good [a] right to their political bias as Democrats, and Populists46 have just as good a right to their reformatory fancies as Prohibitionists. Yet, if any one of these great armies of opposing opinions should advocate47 equal suffrage as its chief dependence for [final] success and the great National American Woman Suffrage Association, or the suffrage association of any state, should become the champion of its special ism, we should henceforth be unable to rally to our standard any appreciable vote, save that of the particular sect or party, with which the voters of opposing sects or parties should believe us allied. We need all the votes we can get from all parties, to win. If I, as a member of the Presbyterian church<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_48_71" id="identifier_48_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church but, insofar as organized religion held any attraction for her in adulthood, she inclined toward Unitarianism (see About Scott Duniway n. 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 7; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night“).">48, for instance, should have gone before the legislature of Oregon, seeking the submission of our suffrage amendment as a measure for enforcing the Presbyterian creed, think you that the members of the Catholic church, or of the Protestant churches <of other denominations>, sitting in that assembly, would have electrified the suffragists of this nation by voting almost solidly for our amendment as [an] ally49 of the Westminster catechism? A year ago, when our second semi-annual convention of the Oregon Congress of women was in session<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_50_71" id="identifier_50_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In Portland, April 11-13, 1898. It was eclipsed by news of the Alaskan gold rush, including an avalanche near Skagway that killed 150, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine and the onset of the Spanish-American War (Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; McKern 95-96).">50, it was boldly proclaimed by a zealous advocate of sumptuary legislation that Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_51_71" id="identifier_51_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">51, the venerable and venerated president of the National [American] Woman Suffrage Association, had declared herself a worker for the ballot as the sworn advocate of <only> one idea. I wrote at once to our beloved president, who never fails us at a critical period, asking for [the] facts over her own signature and received for answer her unequivocal denial of the allegation that she was allied, in the equal suffrage work, with any <sort of sumptuary legislation, or any other> side-issue under the sun. This declaration, which I caused to be published in the secular papers, set the minds of the voters at rest on that score, and enabled Dr. Annie F. Jeffrys<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_52_71" id="identifier_52_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Annice F. Jeffrey Myers (?-1910): Scott Duniway’s personal physician, trusted co-worker; Abigail credited her, as vice-president at large of O.S.E.S.A., for legislature’s 1895 approval of suffrage resolution that led to 1900 campaign; elected auditor at N.A.W.S.A. convention, which she and husband were instrumental in bringing to Portland, 1905; wife of Jefferson Myers, noted suffragist, attorney, and president, Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Commission; introduced Scott Duniway at latter’s day of honor at Exposition (Corning 173; Edwards, Sowing 210, 235; A. Duniway, Path Breaking, pp. 107, 226; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 540).">52 and myself to go before the legislature free from53 all handicaps. When the question of sumptuary legislation confronted us at the capitol we explained that equal suffragists everywhere believe<d> with Gail Hamilton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9chow-to-win-the-ballot%e2%80%9d-may-2-1899/#footnote_54_71" id="identifier_54_71" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896): author, pen name “Gail Hamilton”; born Hamilton, Massachusetts; daughter of James Brown Dodge and Hannah Stanwood Dodge; boarding school in Cambridge at twelve; graduate, Ipswich Female Seminary, 1850; began to teach; sent samples of prose and poetry to antislavery National Era, 1856; moved to Washington, 1858, and established career as prolific writer; traveled both socially and politically in circle of Republican Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, rumored to write his speeches and wrote biography; in Woman’s Wrongs: A Counter-Irritant, 1868, “devastatingly attacked the sentimental view that women were by constitutional weakness and heavenly decree limited to the domestic sphere,” but also favored limiting suffrage to “literate, male property-holders, leaving women to exert indirect political influence”; in Woman’s Worth and Worthlessness, 1872, opposed woman suffrage for the burden it would impose on the sex whose superior role was spiritual guidance via the family (Langworthy).">54 that the only way to reform a man is to begin with his grandmother. This frank announcement removed the last vestige of legislative hostility, and gave us the submission of our equal suffrage amendment, practically without opposition. Potential grandmothers do not trouble our politicians overmuch. The present possible rewards of office crowd55 remote probabilities to the wall. The year 1900 is the period fixed by law for the final vote upon our pending suffrage amendment, and we <need> have no fear for56 the result if we can keep the fact before our voters that our demand for the ballot is not engendered by [any sort of] emotional insanity. The men of our Pacific Northwest are a noble lot of freemen. The spirit of enterprise which led them across the untracked continent, to form a new empire beside our sundown sea[s] was a bold and free spirit; and the patient heroism of the <few> women who originally shared their lot had in it the elements of grandeur. There are lessons of liberty in the rock-ribbed mountains that pierce our blue horizon with their snow-crowned heads, and laugh to scorn the warring elements of the earth, the water and the air. There are lessons of freedom in the57 broad prairies that roll away into illimitable distances. There are lessons of equality in the gigantic, evenly-crested forest trees that rear their <hydra> heads to the vaulted zenith and touch the blue horizon with extended arms. There are lessons of truth and justice in the very air we breathe; and lessons of irresistible progress in the mighty waters that surge and sweep with superhuman power between the overhanging bluffs of our own Columbia, the “river of the West.” My state is the only one represented this year in this great convention in which an equal suffrage amendment is pending. The opportunity has come to us, as to the women of no other state, to claim the dawn of the Twentieth century, as our year of jubilee. To work in unison with each other, and with the women of the older states, [that,] crystalized with constitutions hoary with the incrustations of long vanished years, <and> compel them to look to the free, young, elastic West for the liberties they cannot get at home, is the proud ambition that commands my presence here tonight. Help us with your wisdom, your sympathy, your co-operation, good friends, and when we shall have been successful at the ballot boxes of our state, thus adding a star of the first magnitude to the already bright constellation of <our> four free states which now illumine our Northwestern heavens, we will entertain you with a national jubilee to celebrate our liberties, as the most fitting accompaniment to the dawn of the Twentieth century which patriotism can devise. Then shall liberty, newly born, be christened with a new name, selected for her by an octogenarian Oregonian, now confined with the infirmities of age in a New York hospital, who sent our equal suffrage association, as a message of congratulation, when the telegraph proclaimed the news that our amendment had passed the legislature, the magical greeting, “The58 child is born and her name is Alleluia.” NOTES For details, see “Ballots and Bullets.” It bears remembering that these debates were not merely philosophical. Before month’s end, Carry Amelia Moore Nation would begin in earnest her campaign of “hatchetations,” smashing up ill-disguised “pharmacies” and “joints” across legally “dry” Kansas; at year’s end, she would spend two weeks in jail for wrecking the luxurious bar in Wichita’s Hotel Carey, becoming a national celebrity (Messbarger). Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899, 7 May 1899. Scott Duniway’s role in a controversy earlier that day is noteworthy as well. When Lottie Wilson Jackson of Bay City, Michigan, “so light-complexioned as hardly to suggest a tincture of African blood,” proposed a resolution condemning discriminatory practices in the South, particularly “separate coach” laws, many Southern delegates took offense, provoking a “lively” discussion that grew “quite warm and interesting.” Official history records that this resolution finally was tabled but omits the fact that Abigail Scott Duniway of Oregon authored the motion to strike. From a certain point of view, this action is consistent with her eschewing of “isms” of all stripes; yet it also may reflect unfortunate but typical racial attitudes, and certainly reminds that a principle such as the doctrine of natural rights can become entangled within considerations of expediency (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 343; cf. Grand Rapids Democrat 3 May 1899). Letters to Clyde Augustus Duniway, 11 May 1899 and 2 Feb. 1900, respectively, qtd. in L. Roberts 166. 4: 339. A. Duniway, Path Breaking 156-68. The polemical 1914 autobiography describes it as “the shortest way at my command for telling many truths that Eastern readers ought to read” (156), and concludes that “its facts appeal, today, with even greater force, to men and women in every state where votes of men are needed to secure the blessings of liberty and responsibility, or the right of self-government for all the people, ‘by no means excluding women’” (168). PB: “but” PB: “able, on proper occasions,” This analogy, borrowed from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard sayings, often was used to convey nineteenth-century sentiments about womanhood and marriage (Moynihan, Rebel 206). PB: “God gave” PB: “as they have always had the power to both oppose or allow themselves” PB: “their own” PB: “should” PB: “sometimes” PB: “woman” PB: “till” PB: “this” PB: “other” PB: “grows” Abigail had used much the same language to describe the evolution of industry and its consequences for “the servant girl problem” in “The manifold duties of the mother . . . .” Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for twenty-three years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62). PB: “National” Probably Mary Jane McCully Creighton (1844-1920): born Burlington, Iowa; daughter of David and Mary Ann McCully; crossed plains, 1852, settling at Harrisburg, later Salem; married John Creighton, of Union, December, 1868; lived in Union until 1879, when moved to stock ranch in Wallowa County; widowed in 1884 and moved to Salem; moved to Portland, c. 1907; four daughters; died at 76 after four-week illness (Sunday Oregonian 2 May 1920; Oregon Daily Journal 28 Apr. 1920). White Cross was “a self-supporting American organization which had a large membership throughout the Union, having for its motto, “Truth, Charity and Philanthropy,” and for its emblem cross bandages of white on a field of red. It was founded in 1898 by Mrs. Jane Creighton of Portland, Ore., and its object was the care of wounded and sick American soldiers and sailors, and aid to the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in battle, or died of disease or accident” (Encyclopedia Americana 2: 270). Edward William Bok (1863-1930): born Helder, Netherlands; family emigrated to U.S., 1870; founded Brooklyn Magazine (later Cosmopolitan), 1883; formed a New York-based syndicate service with brother William J. for purpose of increasing female readership of newspapers; syndicated “Bab’s Babble,” written by Isabel A. Mallon and Ella Wheeler Wilcox; launched entire page of syndicated material in 1886, including “Side Talks with Girls,” which he wrote under pseudonym “Ruth Ashmead,” later “Ruth Ashmore”; syndicate eventually reached ninety papers; abandoned syndicate, 1889, to become editor (until 1919) of Ladies Home Journal, which was becoming the most important women’s publication in the U.S. (I. Ross, Ladies 20-21; Mott 4 539-41; “Edward William Bok“) Bok’s idea of women’s news was far too domestic and conservative for women like Scott Duniway. Ishbel Ross comments: “It suited the woman in the home but was scorned by the girls who were beginning to stir about in the larger world” (21). Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer). Emily Burton Ketcham (1838-1907): born Grand Rapids, Michigan; daughter of Josiah and Elizabeth Freeman Burton; educated in public schools and St. Mark’s College, Grand Rapids, Henrietta Academy, New York, and Mary B. Allen’s school for girls, Rochester, New York; married Smith B. Ketcham of Farmington, New York; teacher; outspoken advocate of women’s political equality and enfranchisement for thirty years; charter member and four-time president, Michigan state suffrage organization; principally responsible for bringing N.A.W.S.A. convention to Grand Rapids, 1899; president, Women’s Civic League and Woman’s and Children’s Protective League (Eagle 361-64; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 322-23, 755-71, passim, 5: 204; “<a href="http://hall.michiganwomen.org/honoree.php?C=129&A=253~20~114~96~172~79~2~62~238~113~46~80~3~152~167~74~138~63~92~196~4~242~32~84~229~153~48~231~192~41~129~82~69~109~42~254~93~97~56~175~103~13~249~260~207~21~126~104~230~5~98~131~27~53~38~195~139~239~219~106~57~22~147~58~107~127~6~255~173~144~85~17~148~250~47~261~208~228~49~221~251~43~205~135~168~256~181~33~115~232~176~23~14~75~169~130~162~44~198~204~99~7~118~119~8~136~222~50~227~15~157~65~150~108~24~154~170~163~76~9~209~110~140~70~59~51~155~16~158~156~241~60~182~191~257~116~190~28~164~243~125~160~197~86~193~223~29~134~39~159~111~61~177~132~87~52~199~54~35~210~211~64~112~200~183~165~245~258~100~10~122~71~262~240~77~94~120~11~259~36~25~244~224~151~178~55~88~45~184~128~72~246~78~171~233~121~141~180~206~189~73~235~123~83~89~145~18~66~26~237~30~212~188~142~220~90~19~40~161~218~133~81~247~225~67~37~248~146~217~91~143~12~236~31~68~1~213~101~117~214~174~102~226~137~185~124~234~95~216~166~187">Emily Burton Ketcham”; Jo Ellyn Clarey, “Emily Burton Ketcham”; Woman’s Tribune 26 Jan. 1907). (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols., 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97). Lucy Stone (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). Given that Stone refused to change her name when she married Henry Browne Blackwell in 1855, Scott Duniway’s inclusion of “Blackwell” here is surprising and, to my knowledge, the only time she does so. Elizabeth Morrisson Boynton Harbert (1845-1925): born Crawfordsville, Indiana; daughter of William H. Boynton and Abigail Sweetser; educated in female seminary, Oxford, Ohio, and Terra Haute Female College, graduating with honors, 1862; vice-president, Indiana Woman Suffrage Association; married Capt. William Soesby Harbert, 1870, and moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where she published “Out of Her Sphere” and became active in suffrage movement, responsible for securing “woman’s plank” in state Republican Party platform, 1874; president, Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Chicago, 1874; president, Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, 1876-88, resuming in 1900; edited woman’s department of Inter-Ocean for eight years; board of managers, Girl’s Industrial School, South Evanston, Illinois; organized and seven years president, Woman’s Club of Evanston; president, National Household Economics Association; active in Woman’s Congress; moved to Pasadena, California, prior to 1910; vice-president, Woman’s Civic League of Pasadena and Southern California Woman’s Press Association (Who was Who 518; Willard and Livermore 1: 356-57; History of Woman Suffrage 3: 580, 620-21, 5: 288, 559, 6: 145). (1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe“). (1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim). PB: “But” PB: “would not” PB: “she” Almost exactly three months earlier, Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped lead an insurrection against Spain with the hope (encouraged by Commodore Dewey) of establishing a Filipino republic, and who felt betrayed by the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded the Philippines to the U.S., fomented another rebellion against another imperialist power. It would take two years and several hundred casualties for General Arthur MacArthur and the Army to pacify the archipelago (Morison 3: 122-24). Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1839-1913): poet; California miner, 1855; lived with Shasta Indians, 1857; schoolteacher; lawyer (admitted to bar, 1861); pony express rider; Democratic newspaper editor accused of pro-Southern sympathies; Grant County judge, 1866-70; Songs of the Sierras, 1871, made him famous; newspaper correspondent in Klondike, 1897-98, and during Boxer War in China, 1899 (Corning 166; Powers 229-46). A loose, condensed rendition of the first verse of Miller‘s “The Bravest Battle” (198). See also “Woman in Oregon History” and “Home and Mother.” PB: “would” (c. 1500-1555): English reformer; completed and edited Tyndale’s so-called Matthew Bible; first protestant martyr to be burned at the stake by Roman Catholic Queen Mary I (Mary Tudor, a.k.a. “Bloody Mary); with Dutch wife, Adriana Pratt de Weyden, had nine (some sources say eleven) children (“John Rogers (Martyr)“). PB: “we will” Scott Duniway here reiterates the interpretation of events in Washington that had raised such a ruckus at this same group’s annual meeting a decade earlier (“Ballots and Bullets“). PB: “they will” PB: “Socialists” PB: “claim” Abigail was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church but, insofar as organized religion held any attraction for her in adulthood, she inclined toward Unitarianism (see About Scott Duniway n. 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 7; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night“). PB: “allies” In Portland, April 11-13, 1898. It was eclipsed by news of the Alaskan gold rush, including an avalanche near Skagway that killed 150, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine and the onset of the Spanish-American War (Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; McKern 95-96). Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). Annice F. Jeffrey Myers (?-1910): Scott Duniway’s personal physician, trusted co-worker; Abigail credited her, as vice-president at large of O.S.E.S.A., for legislature’s 1895 approval of suffrage resolution that led to 1900 campaign; elected auditor at N.A.W.S.A. convention, which she and husband were instrumental in bringing to Portland, 1905; wife of Jefferson Myers, noted suffragist, attorney, and president, Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition Commission; introduced Scott Duniway at latter’s day of honor at Exposition (Corning 173; Edwards, Sowing 210, 235; A. Duniway, Path Breaking, pp. 107, 226; History of Woman Suffrage 6: 540). PB: “of” Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896): author, pen name “Gail Hamilton”; born Hamilton, Massachusetts; daughter of James Brown Dodge and Hannah Stanwood Dodge; boarding school in Cambridge at twelve; graduate, Ipswich Female Seminary, 1850; began to teach; sent samples of prose and poetry to antislavery National Era, 1856; moved to Washington, 1858, and established career as prolific writer; traveled both socially and politically in circle of Republican Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, rumored to write his speeches and wrote biography; in Woman’s Wrongs: A Counter-Irritant, 1868, “devastatingly attacked the sentimental view that women were by constitutional weakness and heavenly decree limited to the domestic sphere,” but also favored limiting suffrage to “literate, male property-holders, leaving women to exert indirect political influence”; in Woman’s Worth and Worthlessness, 1872, opposed woman suffrage for the burden it would impose on the sex whose superior role was spiritual guidance via the family (Langworthy). PB: “drive” PB: “of” PB: “our” PB: “A”
“WOMAN IN OREGON HISTORY” – February 14, 1899
Scott Duniway delivered this address on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Oregon’s admission to statehood. Commemorative ceremonies were conducted by the state legislature in joint session in the statehouse in Salem. According to a front page report in the next day’s edition of the Morning Oregonian, roughly 1,200 officials, pioneers, prominent citizens, and […]
Scott Duniway delivered this address on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Oregon’s admission to statehood. Commemorative ceremonies were conducted by the state legislature in joint session in the statehouse in Salem. According to a front page report in the next day’s edition of the Morning Oregonian, roughly 1,200 officials, pioneers, prominent citizens, and members of the general public crowded into the legislative chambers, under threatening skies, to listen to the day’s speeches and music. Scott Duniway, who was one of five speakers on the program, and the only woman, addressed the assembly that afternoon on the invited topic about which she, better than anyone, could speak personally: the contributions of women to Oregon’s development. The official legislative record of the day’s proceedings said of her, revealingly if a little hyperbolically: “Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway is known throughout the nation as perhaps the ablest champion now living of the claims of woman for equal political rights. Her voice and pen have been always eloquent and powerful in any cause in which they were engaged, and many a foe has keenly regretted having called forth her batteries of reasoning, ridicule and retributive castigation. Mrs. Duniway is a noble woman, of whom Oregon is justly proud.”1 In this ceremonial context, Scott Duniway delivered a fitting epideictic address. In especially eloquent fashion, she develops her oft-repeated theme in praise of the Pacific Northwest as the unique scene of liberty and progress. She praises both the men and the women of this region, whose interests, she argues, always have been mutual and interdependent. Above all, she presents an encomium to the heroism of pioneer women. Once again, this epideictic form serves an underlying deliberative purpose, i.e., to demonstrate that Oregon women, having survived hardships equal to or greater than those endured by men, have earned equal political rights. And once again, Scott Duniway’s own life is proof of this claim; if any woman by her accomplishments has demonstrated that she deserves equal rights, it is Abigail. Thus, “Woman in Oregon History” is an excellent example of her use of the rhetorical form of enactment. This address was published in the next morning’s Oregonian. It also was reprinted in Path Breaking.2 This text is taken from the official record.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_3_69" id="identifier_3_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Fortieth 55-60. Dating this speech is a bit confusing. In Path Breaking, Scott Duniway gives the date as January 14. The dateline on the Morning Oregonian’s report, published on February 15, is October 14. The official record gives the date as February 14, which fits the Oregonian‘s publication schedule, and gives an alternate title: “The Influence of Pioneer Women in the Making of Oregon.”">3 Differences among the three are cosmetic. The scientific world is slowly but surely returning to the original order of human affairs in its attempt to reestablish the natural relations between the sexes, in which man and woman are the supplements, the counterparts, but never the opponents of each other. When God saw, in the beginning, “that it was not good for man to be alone,” and created woman as his companion, counsellor and co-worker, the influence of our sex in molding the affairs of state and of nation began; and, no matter how much or how often perverted or hindered, the darkest age has never wholly destroyed it. The great Author of human destiny understood this fundamental law when He placed fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in the same home and family, and permitted each sex to associate with the other on a plane of governmental, social and domestic equality. Often, in these latter4 years, when I have been addressing audiences in the cities of the middle west, and in the east and south, I have been asked why it was that the Pacific Northwest was so far in advance of the older settled portions of the United States in its recognition of the divine principle of equality of rights between the sexes, which originated in the human home. To this query I am always proud to reply that the territorial domain of Oregon was the first great section of our federal union in which woman’s equal right to occupy and possess real estate, in fee simple, and on her own individual account, had ever been recognized or practiced. All great uprisings of the race, looking to the establishment of a larger liberty for all the people, have first been generated in new countries, where plastic conditions adapt themselves to larger growths. It has ever been man’s province to go before, to find the path in the wilderness and blaze the way for those who are to follow him. It is man’s mission to tunnel the mountains, rivet the bridges, build the highways, erect the habitations, navigate the seas and subdue and cultivate the soil. It has ever been the province of woman to take joint possession with him of the crude homes that he has builded, and add to the rude beginnings of his border life those feminine endeavors through which, as the community increases in numbers, a higher civilization asserts itself; and, as it grows in years and riches, the wilderness is made to blossom as the rose. The interests of the sexes can never be identically the same; but they are always mutual, always interdependent, and every effort to separate them results, primarily, in discontent and ultimately in failure. When the true history of woman’s agency in upbuilding the state of Oregon shall have been written, the world will marvel at the sublimity of the inspiration of the man, or men, who gave to the seal of the state its enduring motto, alis volat propriis, or “she flies with her own wings.” You have heard on this brilliant and important occasion a great many spirited, time-honored and true rehearsals of the valiant deeds of Oregon’s pioneer and public-spirited men. No one reveres or honors more sincerely than I the noble courage, the sturdy manhood, the spirit of enterprise displayed by the men whose names are inseparable from the history of this state’s upbuilding. It required men of brave hearts and firm footsteps to lead the way in the vast enterprises that have culminated, after all the weary years that we are here to commemorate, in this realization of our forty years of statehood. Their deeds of daring, danger and endurance have long been chronicled in song and story. Many of their honored effigies look down upon us today from enduring canvas upon these tinted walls. Their silent images speak to us in rugged, yet kindly outlines of bygone days, when, in their vigorous, ambitious youth, they crossed a barren, almost trackless continent, encountering roaring rivers and rock-ribbed mountains, inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder savages. They speak to us of the prophetic vision with which they discerned this goodly land, long ere their eyes beheld the vernal shore “Where rolls the Oregon.”5 Other speakers have extolled the spirit of adventure characteristic of our Anglo-Saxon stock; a spirit which led men, like these, to hew their way through a perilous, toilsome pilgrimage to this summer land of the sundown seas. But many were the women, daily companions of these men of valor, with lives equal to theirs in rectitude and energy, whose names, as yet, have found no place in song and story, who did their part as bravely as did any man; and their memory remains today enshrined only in the hearts of rustic neighbors, or of their descendants who knew and loved them in their obscurity. Many, and yet, alas, how few, will linger but a few years longer to gaze with dimming vision upon the serried ranks of our annual parades of men who will march together with faltering steps at our regular reunions, until at last there shall be left no more survivors of our early pioneers. What further shall we say of the women of Oregon, the wives, mothers and sweethearts of those once mighty men who are soon to vanish from human sight? Have they not as6 nobly and bravely borne their part as did the men? Were they not as faithful as they in building up this vigorous young commonwealth of the Pacific Northwest, which, today, includes the added states of Washington, Montana and Idaho, that together with this mother of states originally comprised the whole of Oregon? That British Columbia obtained a valuable part of our Pacific Northwest territory while your humble speaker was yet a child, is a part of our history of which I cannot stop to speak. All of you older Oregonians can still remember that spirited campaign cry of your youth, whose refrain was “Fifty-four-forty, or fight.” The younger Oregonians can read it in school histories.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_7_69" id="identifier_7_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Boundaries in Old Oregon were hopelessly tangled. Russia claimed south to the Columbia River; the U.S. and Great Britain both claimed south to the 42nd parallel (California) and north to the 60th. The Russian claim was resolved by treaties in 1824 and 1825, at 54% 40′ N (today’s border between Alaska and British Columbia). However, U.S. and British joint ownership persisted until a succession of provocative bills introduced in Congress by Senator Lewis Fields Linn, of Missouri, provided for the “reoccupation” of the country, establishment of military protection, and liberal land grant policies. The Democrats succeeded in electing James K. Polk to the Presidency in 1844 on a platform demanding exclusive U.S. control of the region, epitomized in the campaign slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight.” Thus, patriotic motives certainly impelled the Donation Land Law but, Abigail’s claim notwithstanding, this patriotism had far less to do with equality of the sexes than with nineteenth-century geo-politics. On boundary issues, see Corning 33; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 184-93; Clark, History 311-52.">7 I have before paid tribute to the bravery and endurance of man in subduing the primeval wilderness. It is now my grateful privilege to recognize woman’s part, often more difficult and dangerous because accompanied by the added perils of maternity, and always as important as man’s in building up a state from its crude beginnings into such fruition as we now behold. We cannot forget the heroism of the women of the Whitman party, who were both victims and survivors of that historic and horrible massacre.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_8_69" id="identifier_8_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary and practicing physician, established a mission among the Cayuse natives at Waiilatpu, along the Walla Walla River, in 1836. Amid increasingly strained relations, a smallpox epidemic decimated the natives in 1847 and led to the massacre, on November 29, of Whitman, his wife, Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, and twelve others. Fifty-three women and children also were held hostage for several weeks. Retaliation for the massacre prompted the Cayuse War, 1847-50.">8 We delight to honor the valor of those intrepid mothers of the mighty men of today and yesterday, who crossed the untracked continent in ox wagons or on horseback, some of whom have lived to see their native sons and daughters take proper place as living monuments in commemoration of those days that tried women’s9 souls. We cannot forget the faithful bravery of the lone woman in a rough log cabin in the beautiful hills of Southern Oregon who, when her husband lay dead at her feet, from the treacherous aim of a cruel savage, kept the howling despoilers of her home at bay with her trusty rifle till the daylight came and brought her succor from the neighboring hills. But my time is limited, and I cannot linger over facts already familiar to you all. Let it rather be my province to speak of those mothers in Oregon whose patient endurance of poverty, hardship and toil brought them naught of public and little of private recompense, but whose children rise up and call them blessed, and whose husbands are known in the gates when they sit among the rulers of the land. I have spoken of the inspiration that gave to us and to posterity the motto of the state seal of Oregon. But there was another inspiration, first voiced by Dr. Linn<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_10_69" id="identifier_10_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lewis Fields Linn (1795-1843): born near Louisville, Kentucky; surgeon in War of 1812; studied medicine and established practice at Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, 1816; member, Missouri state senate, 1827; appointed to French Land Claims Commission, 1832; U.S. Senator as Jacksonian, 1833-37, then Democrat, 1837-43; by succession of bills promoting occupation of Oregon, including donation land law providing liberal land grants to American settlers, helped precipitate crisis in simmering border dispute with Great Britain, which James K. Polk rode to the Presidency in 1844 with the famous slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight”; Linn Counties in Missouri and Oregon named for him (Corning 149; “Lewis Fields Linn”; “Linn, Lewis Fields“).">10, of venerable memory, from whom one of our fairest and richest counties derived its name, and was afterward put into practical shape in congress by Delegate Samuel R. Thurston<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_11_69" id="identifier_11_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242).">11. It was an inspiration that placed Oregon as the star of first magnitude in our great galaxy of states, causing her to lead12 in recognizing woman’s inalienable right, as an individual, to the possession and ownership of the soil, irrespective of gift, devise or inheritance, ante-nuptial13 settlement, or any sort of handicap or special privilege whatsoever. I allude to the donation land law.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_14_69" id="identifier_14_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">14 A dozen years ago, before my frequent journeyings had taken me from Oregon (as they have often done in later years), I became acquainted with hundreds of Oregonians over the state, some of whom are doubtless present at this hour, many of whom assured me with pride, and all with gratitude, that, but for this beneficent provision for the protection of home, not only their wives and children, but themselves also, would have no homes at all in which to abide. Woman is the world’s homemaker, and she ought always to be its homekeeper, or, at least, the privileged and honored keeper of a sufficient area of mother earth upon which to build and, if necessary, maintain a home. The woman who would neglect her home and family for the allurements of social frivolity, or the emoluments and honors of public life, is not the woman whose name will occupy a place among the annals of the Oregon pioneers. If Napoleon had said to Madame de Staël<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_15_69" id="identifier_15_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1776-1817): born Paris; only child of Jacques Necker, wealthy banker who was thrice French minister of finance, and Susanna Curchod; married the Baron de Staël, Holstein, Swedish ambassador, at 20; children with several lovers; made writing breakthrough with “Letters on the Works and Character of Rousseau,” 1788; brilliant conversationalist with an aptitude for politics, the salon at which she and her mother presided was the most influential in Paris; supporter of constitutional monarchy during the revolution, seized by Robespierre but released; fled to England during the “reign of terror”; denounced Napoleon as tyrant, for which she was banished, visiting Germany and Italy; in one of the great literary events of the day, published “Corinne,” 1807; married Jean Rocca, young officer nearly half her age, 1811; Napoleon ordered all copies of her De l’Allemagne destroyed, but her son saved final manuscript; eventually fled to England via Russia as Napoleon prepared to invade; returned to Paris after Waterloo; “probably no woman has ever had a more positive influence over political thought of her times” (Helen P. Jenkins, “Madame de Staël,” in Eagle 686-90; “Anne Louise Germaine (née Necker), Madame de Staël-Hollstein“).">15 that the greatest woman was she who had reared the best, wisest and most patriotic children, his famous answer to her famous query would have been divested of all its coarseness.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_16_69" id="identifier_16_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="She had engaged in “a one-sided correspondence” with him for some time and, in December, 1797, they met. At first she was smitten and pursued him (only to be spurned). Purportedly, at a dinner party given by Tallyrand, she–seated next to the general–asked him, “Who is the greatest woman, alive or dead?” Bonaparte is said to have replied, “The one that has made the most children” (Herold 179-81).">16 Men of renown in all the ages have been the sons of public-spirited, patriotic, home-loving women. “All that I am I owe to my mother,” said our illustrious Washington; and our martyred Lincoln, in speaking of the deeds of heroism that characterized the women who bore the soldiers who bore the arms in our civil war, said: “I go for giving the elective franchise to all who bear the burdens of government, by no means excluding women.” I would not have you think for a minute that wise women would lessen paternal responsibility in caring for the home. Man ought to be, and generally is, or is supposed to be, the home-provider. But that he has often failed to keep his part of the mutual contract, try how he may, full many a husband can testify who is now living on his wife’s half of the donation land claim, which, happily for all concerned, was recognized by law as hers in the beginning of their married life, and which she has ever since refused to sell or mortgage for any consideration whatever. I pray you to indulge me while I say that I have never yet met a husband who has failed to make himself an agreeable and respected companion to the wife of his bosom, the mother of his children, if she possessed, in her own right, the home that sheltered them. Nor have I ever known any woman17 of Oregon when so situated to be compelled to sue for a divorce on account of “cruel and inhuman treatment, making life burdensome.” Right here is a pointer for the relief of our overcrowded divorce courts, Mr. Governor<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_18_69" id="identifier_18_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Theodore Thurston Geer (1851-1924): political writer and farmer; born near Salem, son of Herman J. and Cynthia Ann Eoff Geer; educated in public schools of Salem and Silverton; Oregon Institute, 1863-65; moved to father’s farm, Grand Ronde Valley, 1866; published first political essay in defense of Republican Party during Grant campaign, 1868; married Nancy Duncan Batte, 1870; moved to farm near Salem, 1877, composing political articles for twenty years; elected to Oregon legislature, 1880; reelected 1888, 1890, 1892; speaker, House, 1891; nominated as Republican Presidential Elector, 1896; campaigned for McKinley and gold standard; first native Oregonian to be Governor, 1899-1903; supported initiative and referendum, adopted 1902; editor, Salem Daily Statesman, 1903; purchased Pendleton Tribune, 1905; moved to Portland, 1908; wrote Fifty Years in Oregon, 1911 (Corning 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 199-203; Gaston, Portland 3: 484-86). He presided over the Admission Day festivities at which this address was given.">18. That the donation land law has19 its abuses, we all admit. The tracts of land it donated were too large, and the temptations for girl children to marry prematurely to secure lands were too great to create always the happiest results. But the principle was all right as to equality of ownership, and ought, in modified form, to be revived and continued indefinitely, as it surely will as civilization progresses and enlightenment and liberty increase. How largely the state of Oregon is indebted to the donation land act for the origin of the spirit of freedom, justice and patriotism that prompted patriotic women to send their sons and grandsons to face death in their heroic endeavor to “avenge the Maine”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_20_69" id="identifier_20_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="On February 15, 1898, during the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, a mysterious explosion sank the battleship U.S.S. Maine in the Havana harbor. The ship had been sent partly as a conciliatory gesture to Spanish authorities and partly to protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens presumably endangered by recent anti-Spanish riots. 260 seamen died in the blast. The cause of the disaster was never firmly established, although Spain offered to submit the question of its responsibility to arbitration. Nevertheless, some U.S. newspapers coined the slogan, “Remember the ‘Maine,’ to hell with Spain!” in an effort to whip up public sentiment in favor of armed intervention, which followed in April, precipitating the Spanish-American War. The war ended upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, just two months before Scott Duniway’s speech (“Destruction of the Maine”).">20; how much the state owes, primarily, to that same patriotism for the promptitude of women in forming the Emergency Corps of the state, or becoming auxiliary to the Red Cross society, for the benefit of our boys in blue, or how far that experience has gone to increase the zeal with which they now come knocking at the gates of state government for admission within its portals to seats of their own among the electors, where there shall be no more taxation without representation to vex the spirits of our lawmakers with its biennial protests, I am sure I cannot tell you. But I know, and so do you, Mr. Governor of Oregon, and these honorable gentlemen, that the spirit of liberty and patriotism, like that of necessity and ambition, is in the air. It cannot be longer restricted by the fiat of sex or suppressed by the fiat of votes. The women of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho, today enjoy their full and free enfranchisement. The governor21, the legislature, the judiciary and the men voters of all those states speak as a unit in praise of their women voters. And shall Oregon, the proud mother of three great states, in the youngest of which the women are voters already–shall she refuse, through her men voters, to ratify the honorable action of the legislative assembly<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_22_69" id="identifier_22_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1899, the Oregon legislature voted to submit a suffrage amendment to the people by votes of 25-1 in the Senate and 48-6 in the House; Scott Duniway had been invited to address both houses in regular session, the first time in state history that this honor had been accorded a woman. Here she is anticipating the “still hunt” campaign of 1900, which she directed and which failed by fewer than 2,000 votes (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 154).">22 which has given them the glorious opportunity to celebrate the dawn of the twentieth century by making it a year of jubilee for the wives and mothers of the pioneers, to whose influence the upbuilding of the state is, by their own confession, so largely due? Forbid it, men and brethren! Forbid it, Almighty God! And now, as I close, I beg leave to present for your edification the grandest poem that, from the Oregon Woman’s standpoint, has ever been written by Oregon’s greatest poet, Joaquin Miller<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_23_69" id="identifier_23_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1839-1913): poet; California miner, 1855; lived with Shasta Indians, 1857; schoolteacher; lawyer (admitted to bar, 1861); pony express rider; Democratic newspaper editor accused of pro-Southern sympathies; Grant County judge, 1866-70; Songs of the Sierras, 1871, made him famous; newspaper correspondent in Klondike, 1897-98, and during Boxer War in China, 1899 (Corning 166; Powers 229-46).">23. The Mothers of Men.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_24_69" id="identifier_24_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The poem is entitled “The Bravest Battle” (J. Miller 198). Nontrivial differences between the two versions are noted subsequently. One of her favorites, Abigail would quote it briefly three months later, in “How to Win the Ballot,” and recite it again fifteen years later, in “Home and Mother.”">24 The bravest battle that was ever fought! Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not– ‘Twas fought by the mothers of men. Nay, not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen! Nay, not with eloquent words or thought, From mouths of wonderful men! But deep in a walled-up woman’s heart– Of woman that would not yield, But bravely25, silently, bore her part– Lo, there is26 that battlefield! No marshalling troop, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But27 oh! these battles they last so long– From babyhood to the grave. Yet, faithful still as a bridge of stars, She fights in her walled-up town– Fights on and on in the endless wars, Then, silent, unseen, goes down. Oh, ye with banners and battle shot,<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-oregon-history%e2%80%9d-february-14-1899/#footnote_28_69" id="identifier_28_69" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The final two stanzas do not appear in Miller’s Complete Poetical Works. Scott Duniway also attributes this penultimate stanza to Miller in “Home and Mother.” Perhaps Miller’s “complete” works actually are not; perhaps Abigail invented one or both stanzas.">28 And soldiers to shout and praise! I tell you the kingliest victories fought Were fought in these silent ways. Oh, spotless woman in a world of shame; With splendid and silent scorn, Go back to God as white as you came– The kingliest warrior born! NOTES Fortieth 6. A. Duniway, Path Breaking 144-53. Fortieth 55-60. Dating this speech is a bit confusing. In Path Breaking, Scott Duniway gives the date as January 14. The dateline on the Morning Oregonian’s report, published on February 15, is October 14. The official record gives the date as February 14, which fits the Oregonian‘s publication schedule, and gives an alternate title: “The Influence of Pioneer Women in the Making of Oregon.” Oregonian and PB: “later” The title of a poem by Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (164-65; see infra, n. 23). Oregonian deletes “as” Boundaries in Old Oregon were hopelessly tangled. Russia claimed south to the Columbia River; the U.S. and Great Britain both claimed south to the 42nd parallel (California) and north to the 60th. The Russian claim was resolved by treaties in 1824 and 1825, at 54% 40′ N (today’s border between Alaska and British Columbia). However, U.S. and British joint ownership persisted until a succession of provocative bills introduced in Congress by Senator Lewis Fields Linn, of Missouri, provided for the “reoccupation” of the country, establishment of military protection, and liberal land grant policies. The Democrats succeeded in electing James K. Polk to the Presidency in 1844 on a platform demanding exclusive U.S. control of the region, epitomized in the campaign slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight.” Thus, patriotic motives certainly impelled the Donation Land Law but, Abigail’s claim notwithstanding, this patriotism had far less to do with equality of the sexes than with nineteenth-century geo-politics. On boundary issues, see Corning 33; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 184-93; Clark, History 311-52. Dr. Marcus Whitman, a missionary and practicing physician, established a mission among the Cayuse natives at Waiilatpu, along the Walla Walla River, in 1836. Amid increasingly strained relations, a smallpox epidemic decimated the natives in 1847 and led to the massacre, on November 29, of Whitman, his wife, Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, and twelve others. Fifty-three women and children also were held hostage for several weeks. Retaliation for the massacre prompted the Cayuse War, 1847-50. Oregonian: “their”; PB: “men’s” Lewis Fields Linn (1795-1843): born near Louisville, Kentucky; surgeon in War of 1812; studied medicine and established practice at Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, 1816; member, Missouri state senate, 1827; appointed to French Land Claims Commission, 1832; U.S. Senator as Jacksonian, 1833-37, then Democrat, 1837-43; by succession of bills promoting occupation of Oregon, including donation land law providing liberal land grants to American settlers, helped precipitate crisis in simmering border dispute with Great Britain, which James K. Polk rode to the Presidency in 1844 with the famous slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight”; Linn Counties in Missouri and Oregon named for him (Corning 149; “Lewis Fields Linn”; “Linn, Lewis Fields“). Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242). Oregonian inserts “forever” Mistakenly, Oregonian: “and nuptial” An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). Anne Louise Germaine Necker (1776-1817): born Paris; only child of Jacques Necker, wealthy banker who was thrice French minister of finance, and Susanna Curchod; married the Baron de Staël, Holstein, Swedish ambassador, at 20; children with several lovers; made writing breakthrough with “Letters on the Works and Character of Rousseau,” 1788; brilliant conversationalist with an aptitude for politics, the salon at which she and her mother presided was the most influential in Paris; supporter of constitutional monarchy during the revolution, seized by Robespierre but released; fled to England during the “reign of terror”; denounced Napoleon as tyrant, for which she was banished, visiting Germany and Italy; in one of the great literary events of the day, published “Corinne,” 1807; married Jean Rocca, young officer nearly half her age, 1811; Napoleon ordered all copies of her De l’Allemagne destroyed, but her son saved final manuscript; eventually fled to England via Russia as Napoleon prepared to invade; returned to Paris after Waterloo; “probably no woman has ever had a more positive influence over political thought of her times” (Helen P. Jenkins, “Madame de Staël,” in Eagle 686-90; “Anne Louise Germaine (née Necker), Madame de Staël-Hollstein“). She had engaged in “a one-sided correspondence” with him for some time and, in December, 1797, they met. At first she was smitten and pursued him (only to be spurned). Purportedly, at a dinner party given by Tallyrand, she–seated next to the general–asked him, “Who is the greatest woman, alive or dead?” Bonaparte is said to have replied, “The one that has made the most children” (Herold 179-81). Oregonian: “women” Theodore Thurston Geer (1851-1924): political writer and farmer; born near Salem, son of Herman J. and Cynthia Ann Eoff Geer; educated in public schools of Salem and Silverton; Oregon Institute, 1863-65; moved to father’s farm, Grand Ronde Valley, 1866; published first political essay in defense of Republican Party during Grant campaign, 1868; married Nancy Duncan Batte, 1870; moved to farm near Salem, 1877, composing political articles for twenty years; elected to Oregon legislature, 1880; reelected 1888, 1890, 1892; speaker, House, 1891; nominated as Republican Presidential Elector, 1896; campaigned for McKinley and gold standard; first native Oregonian to be Governor, 1899-1903; supported initiative and referendum, adopted 1902; editor, Salem Daily Statesman, 1903; purchased Pendleton Tribune, 1905; moved to Portland, 1908; wrote Fifty Years in Oregon, 1911 (Corning 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 199-203; Gaston, Portland 3: 484-86). He presided over the Admission Day festivities at which this address was given. Oregonian: “had” On February 15, 1898, during the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, a mysterious explosion sank the battleship U.S.S. Maine in the Havana harbor. The ship had been sent partly as a conciliatory gesture to Spanish authorities and partly to protect the lives and property of U.S. citizens presumably endangered by recent anti-Spanish riots. 260 seamen died in the blast. The cause of the disaster was never firmly established, although Spain offered to submit the question of its responsibility to arbitration. Nevertheless, some U.S. newspapers coined the slogan, “Remember the ‘Maine,’ to hell with Spain!” in an effort to whip up public sentiment in favor of armed intervention, which followed in April, precipitating the Spanish-American War. The war ended upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, just two months before Scott Duniway’s speech (“Destruction of the Maine”). Oregonian and PB: “governors” In 1899, the Oregon legislature voted to submit a suffrage amendment to the people by votes of 25-1 in the Senate and 48-6 in the House; Scott Duniway had been invited to address both houses in regular session, the first time in state history that this honor had been accorded a woman. Here she is anticipating the “still hunt” campaign of 1900, which she directed and which failed by fewer than 2,000 votes (A. Duniway, Path Breaking 154). Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (1839-1913): poet; California miner, 1855; lived with Shasta Indians, 1857; schoolteacher; lawyer (admitted to bar, 1861); pony express rider; Democratic newspaper editor accused of pro-Southern sympathies; Grant County judge, 1866-70; Songs of the Sierras, 1871, made him famous; newspaper correspondent in Klondike, 1897-98, and during Boxer War in China, 1899 (Corning 166; Powers 229-46). The poem is entitled “The Bravest Battle” (J. Miller 198). Nontrivial differences between the two versions are noted subsequently. One of her favorites, Abigail would quote it briefly three months later, in “How to Win the Ballot,” and recite it again fifteen years later, in “Home and Mother.” Miller: “patiently” Miller: “in” Miller: “And” The final two stanzas do not appear in Miller’s Complete Poetical Works. Scott Duniway also attributes this penultimate stanza to Miller in “Home and Mother.” Perhaps Miller’s “complete” works actually are not; perhaps Abigail invented one or both stanzas.
OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – November 20, 1897
This address was delivered at the twenty-sixth annual convention of the O.S.E.S.A.. Meeting in her home at 294 Clay Street in Portland, Scott Duniway, as President, speaks personally and autobiographically while striking many familiar themes. She is optimistic about the progress of the movement. She asserts that the best people and the honorable classes all […]
This address was delivered at the twenty-sixth annual convention of the O.S.E.S.A.. Meeting in her home at 294 Clay Street in Portland, Scott Duniway, as President, speaks personally and autobiographically while striking many familiar themes. She is optimistic about the progress of the movement. She asserts that the best people and the honorable classes all support equal suffrage, and only the ignorant and the vicious oppose it. She emphatically endorses principled rather than expedient rationales for woman’s enfranchisement. And she reiterates the need for quiet, “still hunt” campaign tactics, a strategy endorsed by her executive committee days earlier.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1897/#footnote_1_66" id="identifier_1_66" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="On November 11, the Pacific Empire reported the committee’s decision “to defer all aggressive campaign work until the present legislature, or its successors, shall meet and ratify the equal suffrage amendment as proposed by the last legislative assembly. It was also voted to keep up the present effective method of quiet agitation along all lines of woman’s effort, social, political, religious, educational, philanthropic and literary, as the best and only practical [method] to popularize the movement in all the walks of life” (6).">1 The text is taken from a typescript in Scrapbook #1 in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers.2 To The Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association in 26th Annual Convention Assembled, Greeting, Members, Delegates, Friends: When our work for securing the equal rights of women began in the Pacific Northwest in 1871, every woman was required by law to bury her entire individuality, including even her right to retain her own name, to hold property, to sue and be sued, to own her own wardrobe and earnings, and the right to the custody of her own children, at the foot of the marriage altar. If her husband proved capable financially, and worthy morally, all was well; but, if he failed in either case, or was removed from his family by death or insanity, or was rendered unable to support his household through illness or accident, the records of too many a tribunal can point a moral, to make individual mention of any particular case necessary at this time and place. Suffice it to say that while a vast majority of husbands have always proved faithful to their trusts, the best of them could not fail to discover when in Legislative Halls that the same laws which are made to favor or punish the weak or the criminal classes of men work manifold injustice when applied indiscriminately to all women, however worthy, capable or deserving. To bring these facts before Legislatures was the first work of our Equal Suffrage Leaders, hence the frequent changes in our Statutes in the last quarter of a century concerning the rights and opportunities of women, all of which have been made by men in whom the spirit of justice has proved stronger than prejudice or precedent, but we have thus far appealed to this same power without avail in all but four of our Pacific Coast States3 and must still continue asking men to remove the same political disabilities from our shoulders against which our forefathers rebelled and which we know they are destined to remove before we can be as free as themselves. That we are still resolved as in the beginning of our association’s endeavors to continue our struggle till we reach the goal of Equal Rights and can stand by our brothers, clothed like themselves, with the inherent power of full personal citizenship, is illustrated by this gathering. That men, who readily see an objective wrong, when placed before them as an illustrated fact, cannot see it, or are slow to recognize it when placed before them as an abstract principle, is an anomaly not confined to gender. As the field glass of observation turns from its sweep of retrospection to the broader outlook of the present, we see women everywhere occupying positions in the business, political, religious and commercial world, which must ultimately and in the states of the entire Pacific Northwest, in the near future land them in the arms of liberty–a feminine divinity, by the way, with whom men have coquetted almost alone for so many centuries without once realizing that they were out of their sphere–that we need not wonder that they slowly realize the need of the feminine forces of the world as a sort of political chaperon to keep them in political order.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1897/#footnote_4_66" id="identifier_4_66" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Oregonian, claiming to quote her, renders this paragraph: “Women are now occupying so many responsible positions in the business world that they will more and more feel the need of the ballot, and men will more and more see the necessity of bestowing it upon them” (21 Nov. 1897).">4 While the failure of our Legislature to organize in 1886 caused a two years postponement of our constitutional amendment and necessitated prolonging our quiet campaign or one which appears as such on the surface, we have as an association done much effective work, during the past year, which gives excellent promise of an abundant harvest when we are again permitted by the Legislature to come before the voters with a live political issue. Aside from the meetings reported by our efficient and faithful secretary, your president has been invited to address under the auspices of the Woman’s League of Lebanon in the center of the State, an immense Equal Suffrage mass meeting on the 4th of July, and was enthusiastically received by both sexes. One of our leading suffragists, Dr. Anna B. Reed<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1897/#footnote_5_66" id="identifier_5_66" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Bond Reed (1842-1936): born Warren County, Illinois; crossed plains to Oregon, 1853, settling in Linn County; married John G. Reed, 1859, with whom she celebrated 75th anniversary, 1934; teacher and, for 30 years, medical doctor; died at 94 (Oregon Daily Journal 8 Feb. 1934, 4 Dec. 1936).">5 of Lebanon, managed the meeting and the men and women of the County assisted her right royally. Miss Helen Crawford<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-november-20-1897/#footnote_6_66" id="identifier_6_66" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Helen V. Crawford: daughter of Mary Ellen Gilmour Crawford and George F. Crawford, pioneer immigrant from Illinois, 1852; physician; twice-elected representative to legislature from Linn County; born on donation claim farm west of Lebanon; following years as instructor at Oregon State Agricultural College, moved to Lebanon, 1908; following adoption of woman suffrage, 1912, elected City Recorder and Municipal Judge of Lebanon, 1913; also Justice of the Peace (Scrapbook #44: 81, OR Hist. Soc.; Hodgkin and Galvin 42-43; Lang 757).">6, the popular professor of elocution of the State Agricultural College at Corvallis, herself a leading suffragist, had read the Declaration of Independence at the morning or men’s session of the celebration, thus presenting the text from which the argument of your President was drawn in the afternoon or women’s part of the celebration. The sight of that vast array of eager expectant men and women sitting for two hours of a hot 4th of July afternoon, on uncomfortable benches, listening gladly to the gospel of liberty, expounded from the stand point of the disenfranchised sex and contrasting that occasion with a former one when your speaker had dared to thus address a multitude upon the same theme in another County of the State and had encountered stale eggs and the anathemas of the voters as a result of her temerity7, was encouraging proof of great progress. The Willamette Valley division of our Chautauqua assembly was another inspiring occasion where our association enjoyed the approbation of a multitude of leading minds. We kept on the Chautauqua grounds a handsomely appointed Equal Suffrage Headquarters during the ten days session of the assembly, and held one mass meeting, that proved of absorbing interest to a widely spread constituency. The State Fair gave another splendid opportunity for the exchange of ideas as to methods of work between men and women gathered from almost every county in the State, who in every case reported a steady, healthy growth of equal suffrage sentiment in their respective localities. As Colorado and Idaho are the two and thus far the only states which have extended the elective franchise to women through a constitutional amendment, it is our duty to see that the women of Oregon and Washington continue the method which brought success to those states where conditions were similar to ours. The submission of the amendment in both Colorado and Idaho came upon the public like a gentle shower from a cloudless sky. Although much general field work had been done in both states at intermittent periods for twenty years previously–I personally having done about all the preliminary work that had been attempted in Idaho,–the amendment found the women so completely unorganized that our Eastern veterans were quite disconcerted because they thought the experiment was too hazardous to be risked at the ballot box without previous thorough organization for effective work, but the spirit of liberty is strong in the men of our Western states and the enfranchisement of women when placed before them as an issue, without the handicap of any ism always enlists their sympathy. The voters had been educated up to the idea of Equal Suffrage on the broad gauge principle of equal rights to all and special privileges to none. In Idaho a much longer time between the submission of the amendment and the day of election intervened than in Colorado but the leading men of the State all of whom favored the measure except a very few who have since been politically entombed, decided that it was best for women to postpone the time of active organization until a few months prior to election, then when the amendment became a direct issue, it was argued, there would be no time for the adherents of any side issue to get up and agitate them that would inevitably arouse the voters to organize secretly and defeat the amendment, as had been done in other states and in Washington, when a territory, against the protest of resident equal suffragists. This briefly stated is not only the whole secret of our success in the wholly free states of Colorado and Idaho, but is the key to the cause of our defeat in other states, where equal suffrage has been handicapped by a wholly different issue8. It gives me great pleasure to state that Oregon’s and Washington’s equal suffrage veterans have decided to follow the example of the states that have won the ballot instead of those that have lost it. They realize that no state whose women, or any portion of them, resolve to create a ferment concerning any subject involving women’s voting on any other issue can succeed in the future any more than in the past. Let us then continue as from the beginning the campaign of education that has brought us thus far in the quiet liberty loving conciliatory spirit that will not antagonize our voters upon whom alone the women of any state must depend particularly. We have from our first existence as an association demanded our right to vote because it belongs to us by every sacred right vouch-safed to every citizen of the United States through the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution. We make no pledges as to what we will or will not do with the ballot when we get it. Women differ as widely over side issues as do men. They must seek only the full and free recognition of their right to a voice in making the laws which they as a component part of the people are taxed to sustain and to which they are held amenable. Let none imagine that we are not impatient of this long delay. We have learned by hopes deferred through many years of compulsory waiting, that the greater haste produces the lesser speed. We are schooling ourselves to the exercise of that patience, forbearance, kindliness and motherly and sisterly love without which men are always antagonized and will always vote to defeat us. Let us prove to them, to the world and to each other, that we possess the forbearance of wisdom, the enthusiasm of patriotism and the expectations of true prophesy. We do not hope to gain the approval of the idol [sic] and ultra conservative or that of the irresponsible and vicious classes; they always vote in unison against progressive issues, but we do expect to win our full, free and permanent enfranchisement through the vote of honorable men by pursuit of the same methods that have empowered our sisters of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho with the ballot. Every man whom we do not incite to vote against us by undue agitation of any side issue to which he objects counts as half a vote in our favor by failing to vote at all. Our Constitutions are not ironclad but are sufficiently elastic to yield to the will of the majority of those who vote instead of those who refuse to vote, as in the older states, where it is almost impossible to amend a Constitution at all. We have been strongly appealed to for financial assistance from our beloved co-workers, the officers of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, to which, though holding ourselves, sovereign in our own capacity, we are proud to be auxiliary, while pursuing our own methods in our own way, let us not permit our Eastern friends to appeal to us in vain. They assisted us in 1884 before we had learned that we must fly with our own wings if we would fly at all. While they are not working in our way, in some states, they are working with ability and earnestness in their own. Let us do what we can to sustain their work–especially in the States of Iowa and South Dakota, where their efforts are now centered. Realizing that if they fail, their disappointment will be ours; if they win we will rejoice together. As I close I claim the right to pay tribute to my worthy co-workers of the executive Board; without exception they have been faithful in the performance of every duty, but for their efficient co-operation, I should often have been tempted to falter by the way. In like manner have our co- workers in every County loyally discharged every duty thus far required of them; with such a constituency working in such a cause with all the leading men of the different parties as our efficient allies we cannot help but win. NOTES On November 11, the Pacific Empire reported the committee’s decision “to defer all aggressive campaign work until the present legislature, or its successors, shall meet and ratify the equal suffrage amendment as proposed by the last legislative assembly. It was also voted to keep up the present effective method of quiet agitation along all lines of woman’s effort, social, political, religious, educational, philanthropic and literary, as the best and only practical [method] to popularize the movement in all the walks of life” (6). A brief report in the Sunday Oregonian, November 21, 1897, accurately paraphrases the substance of this address. Wyoming (1869, reaffirmed at statehood 1890), Utah (1870, revoked by 1887 Edmunds-Tucker bill outlawing polygamy, regained at statehood, 1896), Colorado (1893), and Idaho (1896). The Oregonian, claiming to quote her, renders this paragraph: “Women are now occupying so many responsible positions in the business world that they will more and more feel the need of the ballot, and men will more and more see the necessity of bestowing it upon them” (21 Nov. 1897). Anna Bond Reed (1842-1936): born Warren County, Illinois; crossed plains to Oregon, 1853, settling in Linn County; married John G. Reed, 1859, with whom she celebrated 75th anniversary, 1934; teacher and, for 30 years, medical doctor; died at 94 (Oregon Daily Journal 8 Feb. 1934, 4 Dec. 1936). Helen V. Crawford: daughter of Mary Ellen Gilmour Crawford and George F. Crawford, pioneer immigrant from Illinois, 1852; physician; twice-elected representative to legislature from Linn County; born on donation claim farm west of Lebanon; following years as instructor at Oregon State Agricultural College, moved to Lebanon, 1908; following adoption of woman suffrage, 1912, elected City Recorder and Municipal Judge of Lebanon, 1913; also Justice of the Peace (Scrapbook #44: 81, OR Hist. Soc.; Hodgkin and Galvin 42-43; Lang 757). A reference to her summer, 1879, visit to Jacksonville, in southern Oregon (“Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association (1881)” n. 9). Prohibition.
“WOMAN IN JOURNALISM” – circa February-October, 1897
In this address, Scott Duniway discusses her principal trade–journalism–and the contributions of women thereto.1 As she relates in closing, this was to have been a “practical” discussion of journalism as an occupation for women but, instead, her introductory remarks cataloging well-known women journalists expanded to fill her time. As a result, the speech is interesting […]
In this address, Scott Duniway discusses her principal trade–journalism–and the contributions of women thereto.1 As she relates in closing, this was to have been a “practical” discussion of journalism as an occupation for women but, instead, her introductory remarks cataloging well-known women journalists expanded to fill her time. As a result, the speech is interesting primarily for historical reasons. In part, the address is typically autobiographical. We learn something of the women who influenced Scott Duniway’s own career as a newspaperwoman, e.g., that the first woman’s paper to make her acquaintance was Amelia Jenks Bloomer’s Lily. She also discusses many others, some famous, some not, including Susan B. Anthony’s and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Revolution, and Lucy Stone’s Woman’s Journal. Often her descriptions are purely factual; evaluations, when offered, are uniformly praiseworthy. Thus, the speech also assumes an epideictic edge. Her lengthy catalogue (“absurdly incomplete” as it may be<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_2_64" id="identifier_2_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="By 1886, approximately five hundred women were estimated to be working in some editorial capacity on American newspapers (Karolevitz 176-77). So Abigail’s catalogue eleven years later, lengthy as it is in mentioning some sixty-five women journalists, only scratched the surface. Notable omissions include Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893), African-American from Delaware who helped found and edit the Provincial Freeman in Ontario, Canada, in the mid-1850s (E. Lewis), and Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm (1815-1884), who edited and published a series of newspapers, first in Pittsburgh and then in St. Cloud, Minnesota (Tyler, “Swisshelm”; Ashley, 1690-1872 430-35; Endres, “Pittsburgh”).">2) is an important testament to women’s contributions to journalism, and is further (perhaps unintentional) proof of her standard argument that women have earned equal rights. It also helps “create an audience of confident activists by filling its pages with female role models.”3 Very little is known about this speech, although Scott Duniway delivered some version of a talk on this topic quite often.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_4_64" id="identifier_4_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Leslie Roberts lists “Woman in Journalism” as one speech given at the June, 1896, Congress of Women in Portland, although she doesn’t identify Scott Duniway as the speaker and although the current text, which describes events that postdate the congress, would have to be a more recent version (139). Abigail also spoke on journalism before the Portland Woman’s Club on May 7, 1896 or 1897 (“Portland Woman’s Club–Directories and Yearbooks”, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.). Given the period of a few months within which it must have been delivered (see infra, n. 118, n. 121), it is conceivable that this speech is the one given on the latter occasion (and that Mss 1084’s uncertain date can be resolved in favor of 1897); more probably, it closely approximates that speech but was given some months later. In any case, Abigail’s interest in this subject was personal but not idiosyncratic; for comparison, see Chapter II of History of Woman Suffrage 1: 43-49, and Susan E. Dickinson, “Woman in Journalism,” in Meyer 128-38.">4 It is taken from a manuscript in Scrapbook #2 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. While I cannot hope, in the twenty minutes allotted for the presentation of this paper, to cover the whole ground of “journalism” I think I can give a pretty correct outline of what I know concerning women’s connection with the press, that mighty lever which, as the art preservative of all arts, has done, and is doing more to shape the destinies of men than war or peace or schools or churches. The woman journalist is an evolution of the present century, and almost of the present generation. I can distinctly remember the first newspaper edited by a woman–and published by a woman–that ever fell into my hands. It was a little weekly, called the Lily<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_5_64" id="identifier_5_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Founded January, 1849, in Seneca Falls, New York, under the auspices of a temperance society, also advocating woman suffrage and dress reform; moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, 1854, where, upon a strike by printers in protest of a female typesetter, Jenks Bloomer (infra, n. 6) fired them all and hired staff of women; moved to Richmond, Indiana, 1855, and entrusted to Mary B. Birdsall; discontinued, 1856, when the Bloomers went to Iowa (Mott 2: 50-51; Hinck; B. Smith).">5 and was the product of the heart and brain of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_6_64" id="identifier_6_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894): temperance reformer, editor and suffragist; began career as a journalist writing articles for husband’s newspaper, Seneca County Courier, of Seneca Falls, New York, and to local temperance journal, Water Bucket; officer in newly formed Ladies’ Temperance Society, 1848, which planned newspaper that became Lily in January, 1849; published articles by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on woman’s rights; began writing such articles herself, March, 1850; began lecturing for temperance, 1852; active in Good Templars; moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, 1853, where she became assistant editor of Western Home Visitor, a reform weekly, and continued to edit Lily; settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa, April, 1855; active in relief work during Civil War; president, Iowa Woman Suffrage Society, 1871; worked for Iowa legal code of 1873, guaranteeing married women’s property rights (W. Lewis; Willard and Livermore 1: 99-100).">6, one of the most thoroughly womanly women I have ever known. Her little paper’s title was characteristic of her tastes; and, though the Bloomer costume was named for her, it was one of the pet industries of her life to let the world know that she was not the author of the style that, by some caprice, became inseparably connected with her name.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_7_64" id="identifier_7_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Jenks Bloomer’s connection with the famous pantaloon-style costume was not quite “capricious.” When Elizabeth Smith Miller visited Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls in the winter of 1850-51 wearing the new fashion, which Cady Stanton also adopted, Jenks Bloomer defended it in the Lily. As the New York Tribune and other newspapers picked up the story, “a fad of national proportions developed. Subscriptions to the Lily doubled almost overnight, and its editor was deluged with letters asking for patterns”; and Jenks Bloomer herself wore “no other costume” for “some six or eight years” subsequently (W. Lewis 180; Warbasse).">7 During the years of my earlier womanhood, when the newspaper world was like a far off dream to me, the names of Grace Greenwood<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_8_64" id="identifier_8_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823-1904): born Pompey, New York; daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke; descendant of renowned preacher and theologian Rev. Jonathan Edwards; moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 1842; graduate, Greenwood Institute; popular columnist and correspondent for leading newspapers and magazines of day, including antislavery National Era, Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Monthly, New York Times, Lady’s Home Journal; pen name “Grace Greenwood”; published Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, 1850; married Leander Lippincott, 1853 (later divorced); published Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe and History of My Pets, 1854; supported abolition and woman’s rights; founded Little Pilgrim, one of the first children’s magazines, and wrote children’s books; living in Washington, D.C., raised money for North during Civil War; Lincoln called her “the little patriot”; lectured on peace, prison reform, and capital punishment on lyceum circuit; died New Rochelle, New York (Welter, “Lippincott”; Ashley, 1690-1872 303-09; “Sara Jane Clarke (Grace Greenwood)“).">8 and Mary Clemmer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_9_64" id="identifier_9_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary E. Clemmer Ames Hudson (1831-1884): journalist and author, born and raised in Utica, New York; married Daniel Ames, 1851; desperately unhappy, they separated, 1865, and divorced, 1874; began contributing letters to newspapers in 1859; best known for “Woman’s Letter From Washington” in the Independent, a New York religious weekly, eschewing “social gossip” in favor of pointed political commentary, 1866-84; no pen name; worked for Brooklyn Daily Union, 1869-72; resumed writing for Independent, 1872; also authored volume of poetry and three novels; thrown from carriage, 1878, never completely recovering from injuries; married journalist Edmund Hudson, 1883; believed that women had higher moral values than men and could comment on public affairs in the name of morality; supported woman suffrage but did not actively participate in woman’s rights movement (J. Andrews; Ashley, 1873-1900 3-7; Willard and Livermore 1: 400; “Mary Clemmer (Mrs. Hudson) Ames”).">9 were household words. Then, there were the nom de plumes of “Bessie Beech,”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_10_64" id="identifier_10_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Martha D. Lincoln (1838-?): born near Richfield Springs, New York; at 16, began contributing to Dover, New Hampshire, Morning Star; married H. M. Lincoln, 1858; moved to Washington, D.C., 1871; following financial crisis of 1871-72, took up journalism in earnest, contributing to numerous papers in and outside Washington, including New York Times, New York Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer; helped organize Woman’s National Press Association, 1882; also authored verse, biographical sketches of famous women, and poems for children; delegate, International Peace Conference, 1891, 1892; president, American Society of Authors, 1892 (Willard and Livermore 2: 462-63).">10 “Fanny Fern,”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_11_64" id="identifier_11_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sara Payson Willis Parton (1811-1872): author and columnist; born Portland, Maine; educated in Boston and at Catharine Esther Beecher’s seminary in Hartford, Connecticut; following a series of personal tragedies that left her a widow, and then a divorcee, she began writing witty material for small newspapers in Boston, 1851, soon reprinted, under the pseudonym “Fannie Fern”; collections of these writings, Fern Leaves From Fanny’s Port-Folio (1853, 1854), became best-selling parlor-table books; became one of America’s first woman columnists at the New York Ledger, 1855, earning an unheard-of $100 a week; she remained at the Ledger for the rest of her life, reaching half a million readers weekly; her columns dealt sympathetically with domestic issues, championing intellectual equality and condemning the double standard in morality, overly large families and excessive housework; came to support suffrage by 1858; helped found Sorosis, 1868 (Schlesinger, “Parton”; Ashley, 1690-1872 358-62).">11 “Jennie June,”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_12_64" id="identifier_12_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Jane Cunningham Croly (1829-1901): born Market-Harborough, Leicestershire, England; came to U.S. with family, 1841; pen name “Jennie June”; created first syndicated woman’s column, “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip,” 1857; managed woman’s department, New York World, 1862-72; chief staff writer, Demorests’ woman’s magazines, 1860-87; published Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 1866; advocated woman’s financial independence and economic equality, insisting that women must earn their rights through work; instrumental in woman’s club movement; after she was refused entrance to New York Press Club’s “men-only” reception for Charles Dickens, founded “Sorosis,” first woman’s club, 1868; president, 1870, 1875-86; called national convention that resulted in formation of General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1889; founded and became president, Women’s Press Club of New York, 1889; authored History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 1898; professor, journalism and literature, Rutgers University; died New York City (Schlesinger, “Croly”; Ashley, 1873-1900 67-69; “Jane Cunningham Croly”).">12 and many others coming later, between whose mental auras and my own there was always a kinship, intensified when I had, myself, emerged into journalism by a personal acquaintance inducing a friendship that could only be ended by death.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_13_64" id="identifier_13_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A reference to Emily Pitts Stevens, editor of the Pioneer, where Scott Duniway “emerged into journalism” as Oregon editor, shortly before launching the New Northwest. Emily A. Pitts Stevens (c. 1844-?): moved to San Francisco from New York, 1865, to teach at Miel Institute; purchased half-interest in California Weekly Mercury, 1869, and transformed it into West’s first suffrage paper, renamed Pioneer, “a woman’s paper produced entirely by women, on the basis of equal pay for equal work”; married August K. Stevens, c. 1870; conducted first meeting of California Woman’s State Suffrage Association, January, 1870; president, 1872; organized Woman Suffrage party of the Pacific Coast, 1872, and supported presidential candidacy of George Francis Train; a supporter of the liberal Anthony/Stanton wing of the suffrage movement; repeatedly accused of practicing free-love doctrines; vocal opponent of “Holland bill” that would have licensed prostitution in California; abandoned Pioneer, 1873, due to ill health; founded Seaman’s League, 1874; temperance advocate in later life, lecturing and serving as grand vice-templar for Good Templars, working and writing for W.C.T.U., joining Prohibition party in 1882, and leading 1888 effort to have W.C.T.U. endorse Prohibition party (Bennion, Equal 57-62; cf. Willard and Livermore 2: 686).">13 Those women who take editorial and reportorial positions, stand side by side, if not shoulder to shoulder, with the men with whom they compete on daily newspapers and are an evolution of the present generation. Recent as is their debut into this world of power and responsibility, women are now a recognized factor in daily journalism; and, having won their place by honorable effort and filled it with consummate tact, there is no more likelihood of their being driven from it than there is of a mother chicken returning to her original shell. Mrs. Jennie G. Croly, formerly known as Jennie June, was the originator of the syndicate system of journalism, through which the lucky holder of a place in a press syndicate can fill the columns of a dozen blanket dailies with the same matter at a price for each that would barely pay for making a type written copy of the original article, much to the disgruntlement of the dozen other aspirants for journalistic place and pay for whose fulminations even the great daily has now no room. Mrs. Croly was, for a long time, together with her husband, connected with the editorial staff of the New York World14. She was also for a time connected with the Graphic; was founder and editor of the New Cycle15–a Club magazine that was at one time the organ of the Federated Woman’s Clubs of the United States. She was president of Sorosis for 21 years, during which time she edited Demorest’s Magazine<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_16_64" id="identifier_16_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published from January, 1865, to December, 1899, under four slightly varying titles; founded by William Jennings Demorest, a leading prohibitionist; popularized by tissue paper dress patterns stapled into the magazine; Cunningham Croly was an assistant editor, conducting the “Ladies’ Club” department of the wide-ranging magazine from its inception until about 1887 (Mott 3: 325-27; Gottlieb, “Demorest’s”).">16 and for a season, Godey’s Lady’s Book<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_17_64" id="identifier_17_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The most prominent women’s magazine of its day, founded by Louis A. Godey in July, 1830, and published until August, 1898. Its circulation was extraordinary for its time, peaking at 150,000 just before the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale was literary editor, 1837-46. All the popular writers of the time appeared, particularly during the magazine’s finest literary period, 1837-50. A highly sentimental magazine, it avoided social and political issues, including slavery; there even was a taboo against references to the war. Cunningham Croly’s association with it was brief (1887-88), a failed effort to revive a declining magazine that had been surpassed in popularity (Mott 1: 580-94; Cronin).">17. The first radical Equal Rights newspaper ever published in this, or any country, was owned and conducted by Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_18_64" id="identifier_18_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">18 with Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_19_64" id="identifier_19_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).">19 as Editor. In looking over some old copies of The Revolution<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_20_64" id="identifier_20_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published from January 8, 1868, to February 17, 1872. Anthony was owner and Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury editors from 1868 to 1870. Its original platform was broadly reform-minded, including “educated suffrage, irrespective of sex or color; the eight-hour day; abolition of standing armies; science, not superstition; personal purity, practical education; cold water versus alcohol and medicine; greenbacks, an American system of finance; organized labor,” etc. After the first year, it focused on “the woman question.” Never financially stable, it was undercut further by the founding of the Woman’s Journal in Boston in 1870, prompting Anthony in May to convey the paper to Laura Curtis Bullard, meanwhile absorbing a debt of approximately $10,000. “The paper immediately became less bellicose” until, in October, 1871, it was finally disposed of to J. N. Hallock, publisher of a Unitarian weekly called the Liberal Christian, who turned it into a home journal devoted to “‘women’s rights and duties,’ with the emphasis on ‘duties’” (Mott 3: 391-95; Gottlieb, “Revolution”; Dow, “Revolution“).">20, as this remarkable publication of the early sixties, was named, one cannot but be charmed with the moderation, good taste, common sense and general excellence of the editorials, nor can she cease to marvel that sentiments of such value to the world should have so long been obscured by the clouds of ridicule and misrepresentation, to become at last the recognized power that blossoms in tens of thousands of free and happy homes and bears the sweet fruitage of womanly graces in many hundreds of women’s Clubs. The Woman’s Journal<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_21_64" id="identifier_21_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published 1870-1931. Edited, 1870-73, by Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, who merged her Chicago Agitator, begun a year earlier, into it. After Rice Livermore’s retirement, it was conducted for more than twenty years by Lucy Stone and husband Henry Browne Blackwell, and then by Alice Stone Blackwell after her mother’s death in 1893. It became the Woman Citizen in 1917, the year in which it was moved to New York and Virginia Roderick became editor, but later resumed the old name (Mott 3: 94, 4: 355-56; Spencer; Huxman, “Woman’s Journal“).">21, another, and today the leading paper devoted to the interests of women, was founded by Lucy Stone<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_22_64" id="identifier_22_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim).">22, whose gifted daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_23_64" id="identifier_23_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for 35 years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost 20 years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim).">23, is one of the present editors; as also are Florence M. Adkinson<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_24_64" id="identifier_24_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Florence Mary Burlingame Adkinson (1847-c. 1925): also known as “Mary” and “Lu”; born 1 Jan. 1847 in Noble, Ohio; daughter of Stephen W. Burlingame and Mary Gibbs; graduated Moores Hill College, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 1867; first suffrage activity was to call a convention in Lawrenceburg; in 1871-72, lectured on suffrage and temperance in Ohio, and held meetings in southeast Indiana; officer in both Indianapolis and Indiana woman suffrage associations; secretary, Women’s Department, State Board of Agriculture, in Indianapolis, 1884; an “acceptable” speaker, she was better known as a writer; contributor, Indianapolis Journal; wrote for Sentinel, a temperance paper, and Chicago Inter-Ocean, 1880-84; began writing for Woman’s Journal in 1884, became associate editor with Vol. 21, No. 26 (28 June 1890), and began “Women in the Press” column, 1894; wrote for close friend Alice Stone Blackwell’s Woman’s Column, 1890-1904; contributor, Woman’s Standard, 1905; member, New England Woman’s Press Association and founding member, National Woman’s Press Association; married William Perry Adkinson (1845-1903), who also graduated Moores Hill College in 1867, 4 June 1873; one daughter, June (Burt xxi; History of Woman Suffrage 3: 551; National Citizen and Ballot Box Jan. 1881; Susan E. Dickinson, “Woman in Journalism,” in Meyer 135; “Adkinson, Florence Burlingame, 1847-1925?“; Chris McHenry, “A Brief History of Dearborn County”; “Ancestry 11137”; Indiana Genealogist Dec. 2009: 167; Lord passim).">24 and Catherine Wilde<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_25_64" id="identifier_25_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Also “Catharine.” She became associate editor in March, 1891; joined New England Woman’s Press Association, 1890; lengthy service on executive committee and as auditor; contributor, Woman’s Column, 1892-96 (Lord passim).">25. Lilian Whiting<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_26_64" id="identifier_26_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1847-1942): born Niagara County, New York; as an infant, her family moved to northern Illinois, where she started her writing career as editor of a local paper; subsequent posts in St. Louis, 1876, on Cincinnati Commercial, 1879, as art critic, 1880, and then literary editor, 1885, of Boston Traveler, and as editor of Boston Budget, 1890; became freelance author, 1893, contributing to periodicals such as Harper’s, the Arena, the Independent; wrote idealized columns about Boston for New York Graphic, Chicago Inter-Ocean, and New Orleans Times-Democrat; wrote The World Beautiful, stressing homely philosophy and the spiritual life, 1894-96; From Dreamland Sent, a book of poems, 1895; A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1899; three books on Spiritualist topics, precipitated by psychical experiences related to the death of Kate Field (infra, n. 68), and contributor to the National Spiritualist, Chicago; also interested in other new religious movements, including Bahaism, the Theosophical Society of Katherine Tingley, and especially the New Thought movement (Hoxie; Lord passim).">26 is one of the editors of the Inter-Ocean27, and is distinguished for her versatility and the readiness with which she takes up any work required of her, completing with quickness and dispatch any task, from writing heavy leaders to doing the fashion topics for the society column. Miss Minna Caroline Smith<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_28_64" id="identifier_28_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1860-1929): journalist, translator, and author; contributor, Boston Daily Advertiser; authored The World and Its People, Book III: Our Own Country, a history for juveniles, 1894, and a book of poetry, Gold Stories of ’49, 1896; joined editorial desk, Boston Evening Transcript, c. 1890; translated George du Maurier’s second novel, Trilby, 1895; translated Benito Pérez Galdós’ Saragossa, 1899; contributed two poems and essay on José Maria de Heredia the Elder to Vol. 9 of the Bookman (Mar.-Aug. 1899); authored Mary Paget, a “slight and amateurish romance,” 1900; translated Armando Palacio Valdés’ The Joy of Captain Ribot, 1900; translation of Valdés’ José, 1902, was “wooden”; authored Saint Jeanne d’Arc, 1922 (M. Mansfield 33-34; Gilder and Gilder 39-40; Dial 1 July 1900: 23; New York Tribune 17 May 1902; Lord 29, 32). In his autobiography, Edwin Francis Edgett, who became the Transcript‘s literary and dramatic critic in 1894, commented: “The staff of editorial writers at that time was completed by a young woman, Minna Caroline Smith, who was as good a companion as the others. Her special duty was to write brightly and lightly on the odds and ends of topics that were supposed to be too trivial for the masculine brain” (102).">28, who is one of the editors of the Boston Transcript29, was at one time on the staff of the Advertiser and at one time connected with the Outing Magazine<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_30_64" id="identifier_30_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published, with three somewhat varying names, from May, 1882, to April, 1923. Founded in Albany, New York, by William Bailey Howland, and devoted to a variety, and constantly increasing list, of recreational pursuits. A gentleman’s outdoor magazine, Theodore Roosevelt was to become both subject and writer in its pages, and Jack London’s White Fang was serialized there in 1906 (Mott 4: 633-38).">30. Mrs. Lincoln<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_31_64" id="identifier_31_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln (1844-1921): teacher, writer and lecturer on cookery; born South Attleboro, Massachusetts; in December, 1879, became teacher at Boston Cooking School, opened previous March under auspices of Woman’s Education Association of Boston, founded 1872; her first book, Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book, 1884, a bestseller that saw many editions, was more than collection of recipes, covering complete curriculum of the school including course plans, outlines of sample lectures, examination questions, and sections on chemistry, physiology and hygiene; later editions inaccurately identified her as school’s first principal; resigned January, 1885; taught at Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, Massachusetts 1885-89; thereafter devoted herself to writing and lecturing nationwide; active in New England Woman’s Press Association from 1889 until death (Wilson; Patricia B. Mitchell, “Mary J. B. Lincoln, Cook and Educator”; Lord passim).">31, also of Boston, is editor and Mrs. E. M. H. Merrill<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_32_64" id="identifier_32_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Estelle Minerva Hatch Merrill (1858-?): born Jefferson, Maine; daughter of Gilman E. and Celenda S. Hatch; graduated Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Massachusetts; taught for two years in Jefferson, then three years in Hyde Park, Massachusetts; contributor to Boston Transcript as “Jean Kincaid”; first regular journalistic position was with Boston Globe; married Samuel Merrill, 1887; founder, Cantabrigia Club; charter member, New England Woman’s Press Association; active in other club work, including Wheaton Seminary Club, Fathers’ and Mothers’ Club, and Woman’s Charity Club; active in National Household Economic Association, organized 1893; edited Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge Authors, 1896; co-editor, with Mary Wood Allen, of American Motherhood, a Boston magazine (Howe 375-76; Willard 287, 291; Lord passim).">32 is publisher and chief owner of the Kitchen Magazine<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_33_64" id="identifier_33_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="New England Kitchen Magazine, 1894-1908, of Boston, established by Merrill and Anna Barrows. It became American Kitchen Magazine from 1895-1903; having absorbed Motherhood in 1903, it became Home Science Magazine until 1905; then Modern Housekeeping until 1906; and Everyday Housekeeping until 1908 (Mott 4: 363-64). Bailey Lincoln’s ten-year association began in 1894; a year later she became part owner and culinary editor.">33, one of the most useful and attractive class publications extant. Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gosse<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_34_64" id="identifier_34_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elisabeth Sophia Merritt Gosse: born Salem, Massachusetts, to Henry and Elisabeth Hood Merritt; educated Chelsea High School, Salem Normal School, and Rockford [Illinois] Woman’s College; married Charles Harrison Gosse; society correspondent for Boston Transcript and others, Bar Harbor, Maine, 1888; joined Boston Herald, fall, 1888, working in five different departments; established “Among the Women’s Clubs” and “Colonial and Patriotic” departments; contributor, New York Mail and Express, New York Herald, North American Review, New England Magazine, Harper’s Bazar, Wide Awake, and Lippincott’s; corresponding editor, Club Woman’s Magazine; honorary vice-president for life, New England Woman’s Press Association; founder, Boston Woman’s Press Club; “an enthusiastic organizer of women’s clubs”; president, Boston Business League, 1903-05 (Howe 442-44; Lord passim).">34 is the Woman’s Club editor of the New York Herald.35 Helen Watterson<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_36_64" id="identifier_36_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Helen Watterson Moody (1860-1928): born Cleveland, Ohio; daughter, William R. and Sarah Ruggies Watterson; graduated University of Wooster, 1883; after graduation, worked for two years for Cleveland Leader and Sun; assistant professor, rhetoric and English, University of Wooster, 1885-89; wrote “Woman About Town” column, New York Evening Sun, 1889-91; married Winfield Scott Moody, Jr., 1891; editorial writer, Scribner’s Magazine, Century Magazine, Harper’s, McClure’s, others; first woman editor for McClure’s syndicate; author, The Unquiet Sex, 1898, and A Child’s Letters to Her Husband, 1903; opposed woman suffrage (Willard and Livermore 2: 513-14; Leonard 572).">36 is employed in like manner upon The Sun37, and Maria L. Pool<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_38_64" id="identifier_38_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Maria Louise Pool (1841-1898): author of numerous short stories and nineteen novels, frequently about dogs and New England life; born Rockland, Massachusetts; viewing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at Boston Museum, at about age of ten, kindled her interest in dramatic writing; began writing stories for Waverly Magazine when about 16, then for Galaxy; moved to Brooklyn, 1870; returned to Massachusetts, 1877; wrote “Ransom Sketches” and series of stories later collected as “In Buncombe County” for New York Tribune; other works included “Boss and Other Dogs,” “A Vacation in a Buggy,” “Dally,” “Against Human Nature,” “Roweny in Boston,” “Mrs. Keats Bradford,” “Katharine North,” “The Two Salomes,” “Out of Step,” and “The Red Bridge Neighborhood”; “a woman suffragist in principle and a friend to all wise reforms, although she never espoused any of them publicly”; returned to Rockland, 1894; died of pneumonia; she and her “literary companion” of thirty-two years, Caroline M. Branson, are buried together in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Rockland (“Containing A Brief Sketch Of The Life Of Maria Louise Pool, By Dr. Amand M. Hale, Published in 1899“).">38 on the Tribune39. Isabel A. Mallon<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_40_64" id="identifier_40_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Isabel Allderdice Sloan Mallon (1859-1898): wrote gossip column in New York Star called “Bab’s Babble,” eventually syndicated by Edward William Bok; many thought that Bok wrote the column, and he was lampooned in the press; when he assumed editorship of the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1889, Bok began a department called “Side Talks With Girls,” a confidential advice column, using pseudonyms “Ruth Ashmead,” then “Ruth Ashmore”; confidential correspondence quickly became embarrassing to the young bachelor, who enlisted Mallon as Ruth; she ran the department for sixteen years, until her death, receiving 158,000 letters in that time; also wrote a dress department for several years; authored The Business Girl in Every Phase of Her Life, 1895; died of pneumonia (Mott 4: 539-41; I. Ross, Ladies 21; Endres, “Ladies’ Home”; Pittsburgh Press 27 Dec. 1898).">40 is author of the well known “Bab” letters. Anne O’Hagan41 is on the staff of the New York World, as also is Miss Elizabeth G. Jordan<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_42_64" id="identifier_42_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Garver Jordan (1865-1947): journalist, editor, and novelist known for interviews and people features; born Milwaukee, Wisconsin; first major interview was Caroline Scott Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison, 1890; covered Lizzie Borden trial for Joseph Pulitzer’s World; editor of Harper’s Bazar before it was taken over by William Randolph Hearst, 1900-13; novels included popular series featuring Mary Iverson; crafted plays, and was advisor/editorial director for Harper & Brothers and Goldwyn Motion Pictures; an active suffragist; autobiography is Three Rousing Cheers, 1938; never married; buried Florence, Massachusetts (I. Ross, “Jordan”; Irene Stuber, “Women of Achievement and Herstory“; “Jordan (Elizabeth Garver) Papers, 1891-1947“).">42, who became famous as a “free lance” on the Milwaukee Sentinel, the St. Paul Globe, the Chicago Tribune and also several Southern papers. Mrs. Whitaker<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_43_64" id="identifier_43_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Alice E. Winthrop Whitaker (1851-?): born Southbridge, Massachusetts: educated Southbridge High School, Nichols Academy (Dudley, Massachusetts); married George Mason Whitaker, 1871; twelve years assistant editor, New England Farmer; syndicated columnist; president, New England Woman’s Press Club; Professional Woman’s Club, Boston; Boston Business League; president, Winthrop (Massachusetts) Woman’s Club; president, Housekeepers’ Alliance, Washington, D.C.; League of American Pen Women; Daughters of the American Revolution (Leonard 873).">43 of the Health Magazine and New England Farmer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_44_64" id="identifier_44_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Begun in 1865 in a weekly edition (considered a continuation of Fessenden’s New England Farmer, 1822-46) and also, from 1867 to 1871, in a monthly (considered a continuation of the second New England Farmer, 1848-64); purchased by George M. Whitaker, 1885; ceased in 1913 (Mott 3: 152, 4: 339).">44 is widely known as a practical thinker and writer. Miss Cynthia Westover<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_45_64" id="identifier_45_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cynthia M. Westover Alden (1858-?): born Afton, Iowa; father was a geologist/miner, and she accompanied him on prospecting tours from Mexico to Canada; graduated from State University of Colorado, then attended commercial college; went to New York City to pursue music education; became customs-house inspector; private secretary to commissioner, New York City street-cleaning department; invention of cart for carrying and dumping dirt earned her membership in Parisian Academy of Inventors; secretary, Woman’s Press Club of New York City (Willard and Livermore 2: 761-62; Burt xxii).">45 has succeeded Mrs. Eliza Putnam Heaton<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_46_64" id="identifier_46_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Eliza Osborn Putnam Heaton (1860-?): born Danvers, Massachusetts; graduated Boston University, 1882, and married John L. Heaton, associate editor, Brooklyn Daily Times; an occasional contributor almost immediately, she joined editorial staff, 1886; started woman’s page of Recorder, first New York daily to focus on woman’s movements, 1891; became joint editor, Providence News, founded by her husband, September, 1891; member, Sorosis and other woman’s clubs (Willard and Livermore 1: 369-70; I. Ross, Ladies 238; Who was Who 543).">46 as editor of the Woman’s Page of the New York Recorder. Miss Westover was only seven years old when her father took her, a motherless child, with him, across the Rocky Mountains. An early picture of her looks like a miniature cow-boy. She could ride like an Indian, handle a rifle like an expert and always carried in her belt a Colt’s revolver which she held across her left arm in shooting. She was an expert with the lasso, and was taught how to use the bow and arrow by the Ute Indian children. She was the first white child who was registered in the Colorado schools. She crossed the mountains 7 times with her father in those pioneer days, shot and killed an Indian who was tomahawking a boy belonging to her train, saved the life of a man who had been scalped and has even killed a bear and fought wolves. No one to meet this quiet, gentle, womanly lady, would imagine that such a past had been hers. She is as well-bred and handsome as any New York belle. The names of Margaret Sangster<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_47_64" id="identifier_47_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster (1838-1912): magazine editor and author, born New Rochelle, New York; submitted first children’s story for publication at age 17; following Civil War, contributed prose and verse to several publications; editor, children’s page, Hearth and Home, 1873; editor, family page, Christian Intelligencer, 1876; edited “The Little Postmistress” department of Harper’s Young People, 1882-89; editor, Harper’s Bazar, 1889-99; contributor to Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Youth’s Companion, Christian Herald, and Woman’s Home Companion; focused on her Christian “mission to girlhood,” writing letters and short essays on themes such as “The Girl and Her Friends,” “Her Innocent Pleasures,” “The Girl in Business,” “When Her Prince Comes,” “The Little Home for Two,” “Shall Both Be Wage Earners?”, and “Waiting for the Angels”; opposed woman suffrage for most of her life as a threat to the family, but changed her mind c. 1910 (Mott 3: 327, 388 [n. 1], 390, 4: 45, 360, 542, 768, 769, 5: 246 [n. 1], 272; Who was Who 1078; Kindilien; Gribbin 138 [none mentions any association with St. Nicholas]).">47 and Mrs. Margaret Welch<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_48_64" id="identifier_48_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Margaret Welles Hamilton Welch (?-1904): entered journalism c. 1890, first with New York Times; edited club department, Harper’s Bazar; “witty and incisive” lecturer; her “The Economy of Reserve” showed “the superior demands of home life over club life”– “Mrs. Welch thought women attempt to accomplish entirely too much at the present time. ‘We are too busy to be hospitable and sympathetic. We do not pay enough attention to the troubles of our friends. Women should, individually, know what they should best do with their spare time. Nearly all of us are trying to do too much.'”; criticized ostentation and the “insatiate pursuit of novel amusements” in society circles; married Philip Henry Welch; two sons and two daughters; daughter, Emily Hamilton Welch, chemist, teacher, social worker; in failing health for some time, died 21 July 1904 (Club Woman Aug. 1898: 147, July 1899: 130-31; Milwaukee Journal 10 June 1891; Leonard 865; Liberty Register 22 July 1904).">48 are household words in tens of thousands of homes where happy children are permitted to read St. Nicholas<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_49_64" id="identifier_49_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published, under three slightly varying names, from November, 1873, to at least 1934, it contained a wealth of children’s literature from all the leading writers, including serials such as Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, Theodore Roosevelt’s Hero Tales From American History, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards’ Captain January, and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories. Edited for its first 30 years by Mary Mapes Dodge, author of Hans Brinker and His Silver Skates (Mott 3: 500-06).">49 and other juvenile publications. “Maud Andrews,”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_50_64" id="identifier_50_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Maude Annulet Andrews Ohl (1862-?): born Taliaferro County, Georgia; grew up in Washington, Georgia; first work as journalist was a series of letters from New York City to the Atlanta Constitution; married Josiah Kingsley Ohl, also of Constitution, making home in Atlanta, 1887-96; one daughter; started woman’s department, authored society sketches, art and dramatic criticism, and essays on social topics, reforms, and charities; published poetry (Willard and Livermore 2: 545; I. Ross, Ladies 594; Who was Who 913).">50 of the Atlanta Constitution is awakening the New South with her sparkling journalism. In private life she is known as Mrs. Joseph K. Ohl, and is the wife of one of the editorial staff of the Constitution. Mrs. Caroline Hall Washburn of the Boston Herald, is the only woman in New England who does society work “from the inside.” She draws a munificent salary, and is a handsome, brilliant and dressy woman, who spends her summers in Europe.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_51_64" id="identifier_51_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="“A superb figure on the Herald, also, was Mrs. Carrie Washburn, member of an old Boston family. She went to Paris every year, and came back with gorgeous new attire. Her diamonds used to dazzle the men in the city room” (I. Ross, Ladies 454).">51 Miss Mildred Aldrich<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_52_64" id="identifier_52_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1853-1928): born Providence, Rhode Island; twenty-year career on Boston papers, first as clerk, then editor of Home Journal; left in 1892 to publish the Mahogany Tree, a short-lived amateur “ephemeral bibelot” or “little magazine,” and to write for Boston Journal and Boston Herald, mostly on theatre; moved to Paris, 1898, where she eventually became a member of Gertrude Stein’s group; took a country house, 1914, where she witnessed the Battle of the Marne and wrote A Hill Top on the Marne about the experience; other works include Told in a French Garden, 1916, On the Edge of the War Zone, 1917, Peak of the Load, 1918, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, 1919 (Mott 4: 389; I. Ross, Ladies 484-85; Who was Who 13).">52 was for twelve years connected with the Boston Home Journal. She is now on the staff of the Herald, where her personality is lost in the paper. Miss Katherine Eleanor Conway<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_53_64" id="identifier_53_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1853-1927): born Rochester, New York; educated St. Mary’s Academy, Buffalo, New York; began journalism career on Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser; for five years, editor, West End Journal; assistant editor, Buffalo Catholic Union and Times, 1880-83; joined Boston Pilot as editorial assistant, fall, 1883; associate editor, 1890-1905; managing editor, 1905-08; managing editor, Boston Republic, 1908–; adjunct professor, St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1911-15; decorated by U. of Notre Dame, 1907, and by Pope Pius X, 1912; active in New England Woman’s Press Association (Willard and Livermore 1: 202-03; Who was Who 253; Lord passim).">53 of the Boston Pilot54 has been in the editorial field for nearly 20 years. Upon the death of Mr. John Boyle O’Reilly<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_55_64" id="identifier_55_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1844-1890): poet, editor; born Ireland; apprentice journalist in Ireland and England until enlisted, 1863; joined Fenian Order, for which court-martialed and sentenced to twenty years, 1866; deported to Australia, 1868; with help of priest and American sailing vessels, escaped, arriving Philadelphia, 1869; employed on Boston Pilot, which he and Archbishop of Boston purchased, 1876; exerted nationwide influence for fifteen years; Democrat, writing “vigorously” about politics; proponent of Home Rule and duties of American citizenship; widely popular poet, publishing four books, 1873-86; poet for O’Connell centenary, dedication of Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Common, and dedication of Pilgrim Monument at Plymouth, 1889 (Bullard).">55, in 1890, Miss Conway became assistant editor and is now second only to Mr. Henry [sic] Roche<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_56_64" id="identifier_56_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Jeffrey Roche (1847-1908): born Queen’s County, Ireland; removed to Prince Edward Island in infancy; St. Dunstan’s College, Charlottetown; commercial pursuits, Boston, 1866-83; assistant editor, Pilot, 1883-90; editor, 1890-05; Irish nationalist; appointed consul at Genoa by Theodore Roosevelt, 1904-07, at Berne, 1907-death (Purcell; Who was Who 1047).">56 on the Pilot.57 Miss Mary H. Krout<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_58_64" id="identifier_58_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Hannah Krout (1852-1927): born Crawfordsville, Indiana; published first verses when 10; teacher, 1872-87; associate editor, Crawfordsville Journal, 1881; subsequently worked on Peoria Saturday Evening Call, Interior, Chicago Journal, and Terre Haute Express; became correspondent for Chicago Inter-Ocean, April, 1888, writing from Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and London, then editor of its “Woman’s Kingdom” department (Willard and Livermore 2: 442; cf. Logan 828; Who was Who 694).">58 is a journalist whose specialty is the political arena. Prior to the presidential campaign of 188859 she went to Chicago, and through the influence of Gen. Lew Wallace<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_60_64" id="identifier_60_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lewis Wallace (1827-1905): soldier, lawyer, diplomat, author; served in Mexican War, 1846-47; admitted to Indiana bar, 1848; attained rank of major general of volunteers for Union in Civil War; prevented Confederate capture of Washington, D.C., at Battle of Manocacy, July 9, 1864; governor, New Mexico, 1878-81; minister to Turkey, 1881-85; wrote three historical novels, The Fair God, 1873, The Prince of India, 1893, and especially Ben-Hur, 1880, which was made into a motion picture in 1925 and then again, in spectacular fashion, by Cecil B. de Mille in 1959.">60 secured a position on the Inter-Ocean, which sent her to Indianapolis in July and gave her unlimited power during the campaign. She arrived in the city at half past 8 one morning and at once secured an interview with Mr. Harrison<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_61_64" id="identifier_61_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901): Twenty-third President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland.">61 who armed her with a letter of introduction to the Republican headquarters. For 108 consecutive days Miss Krout sent from 1 to 2 columns of reliable matter to her paper every day, besides numerous private letters and telegrams which had much to do with shaping the editorial policy. Helen M. Winslow<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_62_64" id="identifier_62_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Helen Maria Winslow (1851-1938): born Westfield, Vermont; moved to Boston, 1883, helped found New England Woman’s Press Association, 1885; wrote on woman’s topics for several Boston area papers including Transcript and Beacon; editor, Club Woman, 1897-1904, the organ of General Federation of Women’s Clubs during those years; wrote twenty-one books between 1899 and 1923 (Mott 4: 356; I. Ross, Ladies 483-84; Who was Who 1366-67; Gottlieb, “GFWC”; Lord passim).">62, herself an excellent all-round newspaper woman, says of her in the Arena<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_63_64" id="identifier_63_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published 1889-1909; founded and edited, for most of its run, by Benjamin Orange Flower of Illinois; devoted chiefly to religion and its relation to various social reforms; exposés on Boston slums; discussed prostitution and openly advocated birth control; favored free silver, agrarian reform, the single tax, trust-busting, and populism; only journal of national import to support William Jennings Bryan, 1896; advocated penal reform and opposed capital punishment; interested in psychic phenomena; favored didactic literature and printed considerable criticism; women wrote a quarter of the contents during its first twenty volumes (Mott 4: 401-16).">63, “One of her great feats was the sending of General Wallace’s 3 column speech by telegraph. No one else had thought it worth while to report the speech entire, but Miss Krout rode 10 miles to the nearest telegraph office and dispatched it to the Inter-Ocean. The edition containing it was quickly exhausted and other editions were called for. The other daily papers copied it and it was finally used as a campaign document. On the day of Harrison’s election she sat at her desk from 9 in the morning until 2 the next, sending all the specials for office bulletins herself. No more arduous or brilliant piece of newspaper work was ever done by any woman.” During the trouble at the Sandwich Islands in 1893<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_64_64" id="identifier_64_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="During Harrison’s term, American settlers had upset the royal house of Kamehameha, concluding a treaty of annexation with the U.S. Cleveland, who began his second term in 1893, discovered that the American minister to Hawaii had participated actively in these events and withdrew the treaty from the Senate (Morison 3: 113).">64, Miss Krout was sent by the Inter-Ocean to Honolulu, from whence she furnished daily editorials on the situation, being the sole representative of her paper there for 3 months. Since that time she has been in Australia, New Zealand, and again in Honolulu for the Inter-Ocean. At present she is back at her desk in Chicago! Miss Adeline Knapp<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_65_64" id="identifier_65_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Adeline E. Knapp (1860-1909): born Buffalo, New York; editor, Alameda County Express, 1889-1890; reported for San Francisco Call during Hawaiian unrest, “probably the 1st woman ever to represent a great daily newspaper in such a crisis”; when Charlotte Perkins Stetson moved to northern California in 1891, a year after her separation from Charles Walter Stetson, she, her daughter and her ailing mother lived with Knapp; traveled Philippines for six months researching books on Philippine history, published 1901, and hygiene, 1902; editor, Household Magazine, New York, 1902-03; author, The Boy and the Baron, 1902, Well in the Desert, 1908, Iron Pirate, 1911; “writes well and strongly”; instrumental in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association (Who was Who 685; Bennion, Equal 150, 168; Eagle 188; Burt 193; Willard 288, 291).">65 of San Francisco was another woman journalist to go to Hawaii in 1893. She went to represent the Call and her value to her paper is no less than that of Miss Krout to hers. Mary Allen West<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_66_64" id="identifier_66_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1837-1892): born Galesburg, Illinois; parents helped found Knox College; graduated at 17 and began teaching; twice elected Knox county superintendent of schools; after nine years, resigned to become president, Illinois W.C.T.U.; became editor-in-chief, Union Signal, chief organ of W.C.T.U. worldwide, with circulation of almost 100,000; president, Illinois Woman’s Press Association; member, Chicago Woman’s Club; director, Protective Agency for Women and Children; traveled to California, Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Japan in temperance work, 1892, dying in Japan (Willard and Livermore 2: 760-61).">66, first President of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association, was for a long time editor in chief of the Union Signal<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_67_64" id="identifier_67_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A leading temperance journal from Chicago; began as Woman’s Temperance Union, edited by Jennie F. Willing, 1874; name later shortened to Our Union, and merged, 1883, with Signal, founded 1880 by Mrs. Matilda B. Carse and edited by Mary B. Willard, sister-in-law of Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard of W.C.T.U. fame; purchased by W.C.T.U., 1910 (Mott 3: 310; T. N. Lewis).">67. Of her Miss Winslow says: “Her editorial judgment, judicious generalship and utter lack of self seeking, her courage, integrity and sound, cogent common sense, not only won for her the highest respect of contemporary journalists but brought the Union Signal into high repute. She died in Tokio, Japan, in 1892.” Kate Field<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_68_64" id="identifier_68_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1838-1896): successful journalist and lyceum lecturer who also aspired to be singer, actress, playwright, and literary critic; born St. Louis; launched thirty-five-year career in journalism by writing travel letters from Italy to Boston Courier, 1859; contributed especially to Springfield Republican and New York Tribune; launched her own weekly, Kate Field’s Washington, 1890-95; her two favorite lyceum lectures concerned Dickens and what she called “Musical Monologue,” incorporating her parody of a London society dinner party and a Spanish song and dance; made stage debut, 1874, acting in minor plays in America and England for several years; publicized commercial and reform causes ranging from telephone, California wines, and glass manufacture to purchase of John Brown’s farm as national shrine, cremation, international copyright, a national music conservatory, spiritualism, and anti-polygamy; founder of Sorosis, first woman’s club; lukewarm advocate of woman’s rights, not endorsing suffrage until 1893 (Baldwin; I. Ross, Ladies 36-37).">68 was another distinguished woman journalist who died abroad. Miss Field was a natural patriot. She took a vivid interest in the governmental questions of the day. Her paper, Kate Field’s Washington<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_69_64" id="identifier_69_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Published weekly, 1890-95; favored “justice to the Indians, free trade in art objects, the preservation of the Yosemite as a national park, and better manners in Congress”; opposed “prohibition, excessive tariffs, and Grover Cleveland”; typically contained a short story; covered the Columbian Exposition extensively (per Scott Duniway’s comment that Field spent the summer of 1893 in Chicago), and theatre and books decently; contained many observations on American life derived from Field’s travels as a lecturer (Mott 4: 62).">69 was quoted far and wide for its fearless, comprehensive and sensible judgment. Her fund of wit and humor has never been surpassed by any woman of the old or new time. She was the woman who persuaded Queen Victoria70 to investigate the merits of the telephone. She spent the summer of 1893 in Chicago, bringing her Washington with her, and publishing it in the White City. While in Chicago she made the acquaintance of Mr. Kohlsaat<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_71_64" id="identifier_71_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Herman Henry Kohlsaat (1853-1924): editor; born Albion, Illinois; educated common schools, Galena, Illinois, and Skinner School, Chicago; built large bakery business; part owner, Inter-Ocean, 1891-93; editor and publisher, Chicago Times-Herald, 1894, Evening Post, 1894-1901; editor, Chicago Record-Herald, 1910-12, Inter-Ocean, 1913 (Who was Who 690).">71 of the Times-Herald72, at whose instigation she gave up her Washington in 1895, and became a member of the Times-Herald staff. The incidents of her sudden death, in Honolulu last summer73, are too fresh in the minds of her many admirers to need recapitulation here. She was under a verbal contract with the writer to visit Oregon at our next annual Congress<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_74_64" id="identifier_74_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The second Woman’s Congress in Portland would occur on April 11-13, 1898. It would be eclipsed by news of the Alaskan gold rush, including an avalanche near Skagway that killed 150, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine and the onset of the Spanish-American War (Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; McKern 95-96).">74; and it is a sad coincidence that our beloved coworker, and friend, also a journalist of distinction, Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_75_64" id="identifier_75_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835-1896): kindergarten educator, author, and Bible teacher; born Cazenovia, New York; wrote book reviews and articles (often on woman’s role in society) for Overland Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, and evangelical press; married Halsey F. Cooper, editor, Chattanooga Advertiser, 1855; two daughters; cousin of Robert G. Ingersoll, “the great agnostic”; tried for heresy by Presbyterians for disavowing doctrines of infant damnation and everlasting punishment, 1881, she left denomination, becoming Congregationalist; instrumental in establishing and administering system of forty kindergartens among San Francisco’s poor, unsupervised, preschool children, 1879-95, which was model for 287 others across U.S. and abroad; first president, International Kindergarten Union, 1892; charter member, Associated Charities of San Francisco; active in Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association, Century Club (San Francisco’s first woman’s club), and General Federation of Women’s Clubs (treasurer, 1894-96); spoke at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; one-time opponent of woman suffrage, vice-chair of almost-successful California suffrage campaign, 1896; suffered from depression following husband’s suicide, 1885; died of asphyxia, with daughter Harriet, in their San Francisco apartment, December 11, 1896 (Jacklin; Willard and Livermore 1: 206-07; “Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper“; “Guide to the Sarah Brown Cooper Ingersoll Papers, 1813-1921“).">75, had agreed to accompany her at the same time. Martha R. Field<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_76_64" id="identifier_76_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1856-?): native of Lexington, Missouri; educated in New Orleans at Macé Lefranc Institute; first joined the Picayune, where her father was an editor; married Charles W. Field, San Francisco stock broker, and worked on San Francisco Post; following his death, returned to New Orleans and joined the Times and then, for ten years, the Picayune, until failing health compelled her retirement, c. 1890; “the best known newspaper woman in the South”; pen name “Catherine Cole”; also founded first circulating library in New Orleans (Eagle 776-81; cf. Willard and Livermore 1: 288-89).">76, known to the newspaper world as “Catherine Cole,” of New Orleans, was the first woman reporter on the Southern Press. She remained for two years with the New Orleans Times; then went from the Times to the Picayune77, in whose interest she walked across all England as a correspondent. Hon. E. J. [sic] Nicholson<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_78_64" id="identifier_78_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="George Nicholson (1820-1896): born Leeds, England; immigrated to New Orleans, 1842; began career with Picayune shortly thereafter, as carrier; promoted to business manager shortly before Civil War; during war, argued with Gen. Nathaniel Banks over Federal censorship policies; two daughters and one son with first wife, in England; married Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook, 1878; two sons; member, numerous city exchanges and commercial bodies; member, Krewes of Rex and Proteus; supporter, Louisiana State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; member, Pickwick Club (“Dictionary of Louisiana Biography“).">78, former proprietor of the Picayune, died some years ago, leaving the paper badly in debt. Mrs. Nicholson<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_79_64" id="identifier_79_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson (1849-1896): first woman publisher of a daily newspaper in Deep South; born Hancock County, Mississippi; as young woman, gained reputation as poetess, writing under pen name “Pearl Rivers”; became literary editor of New Orleans Picayune, c. 1870; married Alva Morris Holbrook, its former editor and owner, forty-one years her senior, 1872; the paper’s new owners failed and it reverted to her husband, who died, 1876, leaving her with $80,000 debt; rather than declaring bankruptcy, she became its active publisher; married business manager George Nicholson, 1878; together they made the paper solvent, tripling circulation; she made it a family paper, adding women’s and children’s departments and, in 1879, a column of society news; president, Women’s National Press Association, 1884; supported civic and reform causes, e.g., Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and public education; though not an advocate of woman suffrage, believed that women should be capable of supporting themselves (Wiegand).">79, contrary to the advice of her friends, then stepped to the front, took personal charge of the paper and made it one of the leading journals of the South. She died last summer, leaving the Picayune as a wellpaying property.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_80_64" id="identifier_80_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway’s brief account is mistaken in three respects: “E. J.” were Eliza’s initials, not George’s; Holbrook was the husband who “died some years ago” and left the papers in arrears–Eliza and George died ten days apart during an influenza epidemic; and they died in February, not the “summer,” of 1896. Apparently, Abigail was not the first to mistake “E. J.” for her husband (“Pearl Rivers“).">80 Frank Leslie<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_81_64" id="identifier_81_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Miriam Florence Folline Leslie (1836-1914): born New Orleans; rather salacious private life that included multiple marriages and romances; by virtue of her marriage to Ephraim George Squier (1857), who became editor of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1861, was introduced to the flamboyant publishing magnate; editor, Leslie’s Lady’s Magazine, 1863; inaugurated and edited Frank Leslie’s Chimney Corner, a family magazine, 1865; editor, Frank Leslie’s Lady’s Journal, a fashion periodical, 1871; divorced Squier, 1873, and married Leslie, 1874; devoted to lavish social life and frequent trips to Europe; Leslie’s death in 1880 left her with bankrupt business; she reorganized and revitalized it, reigning for fifteen years until leasing it to a syndicate, 1895; would return, 1898, when syndicate failed, temporarily rejuvenating Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly; “The Empress of Journalism” would begin to fail by 1900, and publishing house would cease to exist by 1905; would leave almost $1 million of her estate to Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for “the furtherance of the cause of Woman’s Suffrage” (Stern; Ashley, 1690-1872 299-303).">81 is another shining example of what women can do in journalism. A good many years ago her husband died, leaving his large publishing house deeply in debt. Mrs. Leslie promptly assumed her husband’s Christian name, Frank, took charge of his insolvent business, borrowed $50,000 on the “plant” and went to work. In less than two years she had cleared the “plant” of debt. Then she bought a set of the largest diamonds she could find in New York and went to Europe, where she goes every summer for rest and recreation. Middy Morgan<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_82_64" id="identifier_82_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Maria Morgan (1828-1892): known as “Middy”or “Midy”; born Cork, Ireland; expert horsewoman, supervised stables of King Victor Emanuel of Italy, c. 1865-70; came to America, c. 1870, and reported especially livestock news for New York Tribune, Herald, and Times; also contributed to Turf, Field and Farm and Live-Stock Reporter; wrote pedigrees and racing articles for American Agriculturalist; known for series of articles that helped improve treatment of cattle on ocean steamers; one adopted and estranged son; “proud and self-contained” (Willard and Livermore 2: 520-21; cf. I. Ross, Ladies 145-49).">82, the famous live stock reporter, who died some years ago, while still a reporter on the New York Times, was as refined, kind-hearted and generous as she was eccentric in dress and manners. She won the respect of men in the stock yards as well as in the reportorial field, and when she died was honestly mourned by the newspaper world. Sarah Josepha Hale<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_83_64" id="identifier_83_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879): magazine editor; born Newport, New Hampshire; teacher, c. 1806-13; married attorney David Hale, 1813; 5 children; widowed in 1822, compelled by circumstances to open millinery and turned seriously to writing verse and fiction; became editor, Rev. John Lauris Blake’s Ladies’ Magazine, 1828, and moved to Boston; accepted most prevailing beliefs about “women’s sphere” but championed greater educational opportunities such as the female seminary movement and state normal schools for women; became editor, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1837, when Godey bought Ladies’ Magazine, combining it with his Lady’s Book, and moved to Philadelphia, where she continued to warn against militant woman’s rights ideas such as equality with men and suffrage, and tended to avoid controversial topics altogether; gradually came to accept some careers outside the home, including charity, missionary work, and medicine; supported property rights for married women; built Godey’s circulation to a record-breaking 150,000 by 1860; wrote “Mary had a little lamb” and other poems; her agitation responsible for Lincoln’s proclamation of a national Thanksgiving Day, October, 1864; fifty or so books attributed to her; announced retirement in December, 1877, issue, at age 90; died following April (Boyer, “Hale”; Mott 1: 583-84).">83 was for many years editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book.84 To Mrs. Hale belongs the credit of raising the fund to purchase the home and tomb of Washington at Mt. Vernon, and preserve them as monuments of the Nation’s early history. Clara Bewick Colby<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_85_64" id="identifier_85_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”).">85 is editor of The Woman’s Tribune86, now published at Washington D.C. Mrs. Colby is an able writer and speaker, as also is Mrs. Lillie G. Harper<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_87_64" id="identifier_87_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This appears doubly wrong. The manuscript originally read “Frances”; perhaps Scott Duniway was confusing this Harper with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the African-American lecturer, author, and temperance advocate (Filler, “Harper”). “Frances” then was replaced by “Lillie G.” But the Harper who fits this description is Ida A. Husted Harper (1851-1931): born Fairfield, Indiana; educated in Muncie, and one year at Indiana University; high school principal, Peru, Indiana, 1869; married Thomas Winans Harper, 1871, making home in Terra Haute; wrote for Terra Haute Saturday Evening Mail for twelve years; edited “Woman’s Department,” Locomotive Fireman’s Magazine, 1884-93; divorced, 1890; briefly editor-in-chief, Terra Haute Daily News; moved to Indianapolis, May, 1890, and joined editorial staff, Indianapolis News; in charge of press relations, California suffrage amendment campaign, 1896; became Anthony’s biographer, 1897, publishing first two volumes in 1898 and a third in 1908; collaborated on History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, 1902, and wrote vols. 5-6, 1922; chair, press committee, International Council of Women, 1899-1902; in charge of publicity, final N.A.W.S.A. campaign for federal suffrage amendment, 1916-19 (Phillips, “Harper”).">87, for a long time connected with the press of Indianapolis, and now in the personal employ of Susan B. Anthony on whose life’s history she is at work. Mrs. S. E. A. Higgins<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_88_64" id="identifier_88_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sarah Evelina Austin Higgins (1834-?): officer, Santa Barbara Grange, 1874; Superintendent of Press Work, and president, Santa Barbara County, W.C.T.U. of Southern California, 1888-89; active in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association, 1892; coauthored booklet of verse, Flowers of the Sea, 1895, and historical La Casa de Aguirre of Santa Barbara, 1841-1884, 1896 (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 496; Pacific Rural Press 19 Dec. 1874; Los Angeles Herald 6 Oct. 1888, 11 July 1889, 25 Sept. 1889, 28 Sept. 1892, 2 Nov. 1897).">88 was for 15 years reporter for the Santa Barbara Independent89 She is descended from the first publisher of the Hartford Courant, whose wife, after his death conducted that paper, being one [of] its first woman editors.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_90_64" id="identifier_90_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Courant, the oldest newspaper in continuous publication in the U.S., was started as a weekly paper in 1764 by printer Thomas Green, who sold the newspaper to his assistant, Ebenezer Watson. When Watson died of smallpox in 1777, his widow, Hannah, took over, becoming one of the first women publishers in America (“Older Than the Nation“).">90 Mrs. Laura Young Pinney<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_91_64" id="identifier_91_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Laura Ann Young Pinney (1849-?): active, Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association, and president, 1903-04; authored Within the Golden Gate, 1893, and A Brief History of Thomas Young and His Descendants, 1904;contributor, La copa de oro, 1905; contributor, Woman’s Work, organ of Women’s Foreign Missionary Societies of Presbyterian Church, 1911-22; authoredGenealogy of the Pinney Family in America, 1924 (Los Angeles Herald 7 Dec. 1897, 6 Mar. 1898; San Francisco Call 29 Dec. 1896, 24 Nov. 1903, 14 Mar. 1904, 10 Feb. 1909, 23 May 1911).">91 edits a department in the San Francisco Occident.92 Mrs. Emmeline B. Wells<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_93_64" id="identifier_93_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Emmeline Blanche Woodward Wells (1828-1921): Mormon feminist; born Petersham, Massachusetts; following her mother, converted from Congregationalism to Mormonism, 1842; married James Harvey Harris, 1843, and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, 1844, meeting Joseph Smith before his murder; deserted by her husband, became the second wife of Bishop Newel K. Whitney in ceremony performed by Brigham Young, 1845; took part in Mormon exodus from Nauvoo to Salt Lake Valley, 1846-48; widowed with two daughters, 1850, became seventh wife of Young’s close friend Daniel Hanmer Wells, with whom she had three more daughters; began periodic contributions to Woman’s Exponent, organ of the Relief Society, 1873; associate editor, 1875; editor, 1877-1914; promoted woman suffrage and woman’s rights, first in defense of suffrage first granted by territorial legislature, 1870, in face of Congressional attempts to repeal suffrage as part of effort to ban polygamy (attempts that reached fruition, 1877), and thereafter for restoration (succeeding when Utah achieved statehood, 1896); vice-president for Utah, N.W.S.A., 1874, and regular participant in national conventions, 1879-onward; died of heart failure at 93; eulogized as a “veritable mother in Israel,” flags flew at half-staff for first time for a woman in Utah during her funeral (De Pillis; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 936-56).">93 is editor of the Woman’s Exponent94 of Salt Lake City. She is a hard worker and a noble specimen of border womanhood. Mrs. Alice Moore McComas<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_95_64" id="identifier_95_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1850-?): born Paris, Illinois; known as “peculiar,” “self-willed and headstrong” as youth for strong opinions on social and religious questions; educated at Convent of St. Mary, Terre Haute, Indiana; married Charles C. McComas, who later would be state senator, 1871; following financial disaster in 1876 panic, moved to Kansas, 1877, where began writing under pen-name; moved to Los Angeles, 1887, writing under own name; editor, woman’s department, Los Angeles Evening Express, 1887-90; vice president, California Woman Suffrage Association, first vice president, Ladies’ Annex, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and board of directors, Woman’s Industrial Union, 1891-92; would attend second Oregon Woman’s Congress in Portland, April, 1898, and deliver suffrage address at Willamette Valley Chautauqua that July (Willard and Livermore 2: 483-84; Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 484, 488, 494-502, 893).">95 of Los Angeles, editor of the Household magazine of that city and correspondent of the Toledo Blade and New Orleans Spectator is a lady of many accomplishments, an unflinching patriot and an successful Equal Rights campaigner, whose own home, like that of every distinguished Equal Rights worker, is her chief delight. Mrs. M. E. Cramer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_96_64" id="identifier_96_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Malinda Elliott Cramer (1844-1907): “New Thought” proponent and founder, Church of Divine Science; born Greensboro, Indiana; daughter of Obediah and Mary Henshaw Elliott; persistent ill health motivated move to San Francisco, 1870, but she remained an invalid; married photographer Charles Lake Cramer, 1872; turning to prayer, she experienced a revelation, 1885, and was healed by 1887, at which time she studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins and began faith-healing; established Harmony, October, 1887; cofounded Home College of Divine Science, 1888, and second college, Oakland, 1893; authored Divine Science and Healing, first published 1890; cofounder, International Divine Science Association, 1892, and president, 1899; congresses in Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, and St. Louis, 1893-97, gradually differentiated Divine Science from Christian Science; taught classes at Colorado College of Divine Science, Denver, 1898, and at Charles and Myrtle Fillmore’s “Unity Village,” in Missouri; died possibly of injuries related to San Francisco earthquake (Satter 97-99, 108; Dresser 137, 192-93, 237-38; “Malinda Cramer“; Tyner 317, 319; Woman’s Tribune 19 Oct. 1907; Bennion, Equal 166).">96 of San Francisco is the editor and publisher of Harmony<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_97_64" id="identifier_97_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mott describes it as a “theosophical” periodical, published 1888-1906 (4: 286-87). Theosophy, based on the Vedic and Brahman scriptures of India, but also incorporating occult elements from Egypt and elsewhere, had been founded by Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky (Boyer, “Blavatsky”). Although related “metaphysical” movements that posited that the world is primarily spiritual rather than material, and that the mind’s power can change reality, New Thought and Theosophy (and, for that matter, a third, related movement: Spiritualism) were not identical. Tellingly, Satter’s history of New Thought does not mention Theosophy. For a period treatment of their similarities and differences, see Sheldon.">97, a monthly magazine devoted to “mental healing.” Mrs. Camilla Turley Hanna<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_98_64" id="identifier_98_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Born Council Bluffs, Iowa; daughter of prominent inventor; married Judge Septimus James Hanna (1844-1921), a lawyer who practiced in Iowa, Chicago, and Colorado, 1869; believed she was healed of incurable disease after reading Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, 1886; moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1887, practicing healing; moved to Boston, 1892, where he became editor, and she assistant editor, Christian Science Journal, 1892, and Christian Science Sentinel, 1898; he was first reader in Mother Church, Boston, 1894-1902; earned CSD degree, 1898; later moved to Pasadena, California (Who was Who 516; “A Biographical Sketch of Judge Hanna”).">98 is editor of the Scientist99, published in Boston under the tutelage of Mrs. Eddy<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_100_64" id="identifier_100_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910): founder, Church of Christ, Scientist; born Bow, New Hampshire; tormented by various physical and emotional ailments for much of her life, she sought out Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a traveling mesmerist, for treatment, 1862, and came to accept his views that the cause and cure of disease were mental (disease, which was false “belief,” thus had a religious dimension) and that “absent treatment” could be given over long distances by telepathy; later would date the founding of Christian Science to February, 1866, when, following a severe back injury caused by slipping on ice, she defied predictions of death and arose healed “on the third day”; opened Christian Scientists’ Home in Lynn, Massachusetts, and held first Christian Science service, 1875; published Science and Health that fall; became obsessed with Malicious Animal Magnetism, the doctrine that minds could send out destructive telepathic signals; Church of Christ, Scientist, formally chartered, 1879; opened Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, 1882; founded Christian Science Monitor, 1908; died at 89, probably of pneumonia (Ahlstrom; Lord passim).">100. Mrs. Madge Morris Wagner<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_101_64" id="identifier_101_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Madge Hilyard Morris Wagner (?-1924): journalist and poet; born on wagon train to California, arriving perhaps in 1850s; had two daughters with first husband, the elder of whom died of consumption, c. 1882; settled in San Jose, reporting and writing features for Mercury; first volume of poetry called Carmel; Debris followed, 1881; Harr Wagner’s publishing company published Poems, 1885; married Wagner, 1887; moved to San Diego, becoming editor of Golden Era, 1891-93, contributing poetry and regular “Youth Department” until its demise; continued writing both poetry and prose as late as 1921, largely of highly sentimental variety; “shy, retiring, and self- effacing”; “Liberty’s Bell,” written for San Jose’s July 4 celebration in 1882, became stimulus for construction of new bell at World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893–traveled to Chicago where she was honored and her daughter read the poem; small and frail, sought health in Colorado, where she wrote well-known “To the Colorado Desert,” extravagantly praised by Joaquin Miller; died San Mateo County (Bennion, Equal 126-30, 171; Eagle 186; Who was Who 1285).">101 of San Diego is editor of the Golden Era<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_102_64" id="identifier_102_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="First distinctly literary publication on Pacific coast, founded 1852 in San Francisco by J. MacDonough Foard, 21, and Rollin M. Daggett, 19, who “pooled their liking for racy journalism”; it was “strong on racy sketches of mining life and a kind a gay and reckless dramatic criticism”; contributors included Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller; first sold 1860 and subsequently ruined, according to one founder, by “namby-pamby schoolgirl trash”; moved to San Diego by editor Harr Wagner, 1887; ended 1893 (Mott 2: 117, 3: 56, 4: 105-06; Bennion, Equal 120, 127-28).">102 of the city. Mrs. Ada Henry Van Pelt<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_103_64" id="identifier_103_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1838-1923): born Princeton, Kentucky; daughter of Maj. C. B. Henry; married Capt. Charles E. Van Pelt (1844-?), 1864; moved to Nebraska, 1868; came to California, 1889, settling first in Oakland; editor, Pacific Ensign, 1891-97; prominent in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association (president, 1895) and California state W.C.T.U. for many years; California Woman’s Congresses, 1894-98; recording secretary, California Suffrage Constitutional Amendment Campaign Association, 1895; first woman to serve on executive board of Christian Churches of California; famed Red Cross worker during Spanish-American War and World War I; helped form Ladies’ Auxiliary, Y.M.C.A., 1904; moved to Los Angeles, c. 1905; inventor, holding patents for locks (“Ada Henry Van Pelt“; “Charles E. Van Pelt“; American Woman’s Magazine Aug. 1895, Oct. 1895; Woman’s Journal 15 June 1895; San Francisco Call 18 Aug. 1896, 3 Aug. 1898, 2 Feb. 1901, 21 May 1904; Bennion, Equal 171; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 482).">103 of Oakland, Cal, is editor of the Pacific Ensign<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_104_64" id="identifier_104_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An eight-page weekly, incorporated November, 1890, that, “with more reliable funding,” succeeded The Pharos (earlier known as The Bulletin), the original publication of the California state W.C.T.U., which had been founded in 1885 by its president, Mary Frank Browne (Bennion, Equal 48; Sacramento Daily Union, 30 Nov. 1890).">104, organ of the California W.C.T.U. Mrs. Anna R. Riggs<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_105_64" id="identifier_105_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Rankin Riggs (1835-1908): born Cynthiana, Kentucky; daughter of Richard Montgomery Rankin and Louisa E. Eads Rankin; six brothers, five sisters; moved to farm in Menard County, 1837, then to farm in McLean County, Illinois, near Saybrook; came to Portland with husband Captain H. M. Riggs (?-1903), 1882; president, state W.C.T.U. “and gained more than local fame as a public speaker,” 1882-90; founding editor, White Ribboner, 1891; founded and directed Refuge Home for fallen girls for sixteen years; founded Florence Crittenton home in Portland, superintendent of homes in Idaho and Montana; died Butte, Montana, at 73, of angina pectoris or pneumonia (Pacific Empire 10 Mar. 1898; Morning Oregonian 9 May 1908; Gaston, Portland 3: 548-51; Eagle 813-15; Crawford 4).">105 of Portland Oregon edits The White Ribbon, also an organ of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Homer Hill<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_106_64" id="identifier_106_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mrs. Homer M. Hill: President, Washington Equal Suffrage Association, 1898 (later Mary [May] Arkwright Hutton’s choice in struggle with Emma Smith DeVoe); founder, Woman’s Industrial Club of Seattle (Croly 1143-44, 1149; P. Horner 31; program for forty-first N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909, in folder “Politics and Miscellaneous–Political Groups and Issues-Women,” Mss 1534, OR Hist. Soc.; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 970-71, 976).">106 of Seattle edits and publishes “Washington Women.”107 Mrs. Eva Oliver<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_108_64" id="identifier_108_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Eva Colwell Brooks Oliver: second wife of Willard N. Oliver, who divorced his first wife in March, 1893, and remarried in June (Sausalito News 31 Mar. 1893; San Francisco Call 12 June 1893). Why she generally is identified as “Mrs. E. R. Oliver” is unknown.">108 of San Francisco assists her husband in the management of the Pacific Churchman<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_109_64" id="identifier_109_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An Episcopal weekly from San Francisco, 1866-at least 1934; became a biweekly under new management, 1891; Willard N. Oliver, who had been connected with the Commercial News, became manager, c. 1894; Eva Oliver edited and managed following her husband’s death (on 3 April, 1897), until 1904 (Bennion, Equal 73, 169; Mott 3: 75; San Francisco Call 18 June 1891, 2 Aug. 1891, 18 Sept. 1894; 4 Apr. 1897, 26 May 1901; Los Angeles Herald, 21 May 1897; Sausalito News 3 June 1892).">109. Mrs. Catharine Scott Coburn<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_110_64" id="identifier_110_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Catharine Amanda Scott Coburn (1839-1913): Abigail’s younger (by five years) sister; she was 13 when the Scott family journeyed overland to Oregon; married John R. Coburn, carpenter, 1857, moving to Canemah; after husband was killed in steamboat explosion, July, 1868, began teaching in Canemah, then Forest Grove, to support four daughters; associate editor, New Northwest, 1874-79; Portland Daily Bee, 1879; Oregonian, 1880-82; editor, Portland Evening Telegram, 1883-88; associate editor, Oregonian, 1888 and a quarter century thereafter; a “kindhearted and extraordinarily gifted woman” who was a “more disciplined writer” than Abigail; equally devoted to woman’s rights, suffrage, and equal pay for equal work, but without Abigail’s notoriety; worked at Portland Baby Home; president, Portland Woman’s Union; long-time Secretary, O.S.E.S.A. (Moynihan, Rebel 81, 96; Turnbull 177-80; H. Spalding; Bennion, Equal 141-42).">110, of Portland Oregon, who began her literary career as assistant editor of The New Northwest, on which she worked with marked success for a number of years, has long been a member of the Oregonian’s staff, and is known as one of its most trenchant ready and versatile writers. Mrs. Eugenie M. Scherer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_111_64" id="identifier_111_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(c. 1863-?): born California; father born England, mother born Massachusetts; married Charles W. Scherer (c. 1845-?), born Indiana (U.S. Census: 1900: Oregon Series T623, Roll 1351, Page 170, Subpage A; U.S. Census: 1920: Oregon Series T625, Roll 1501, Page 24, Subpage A; not listed in the 1890 Oregon census, they may have arrived relatively recently). In late 1894, the Scherers’ 15-year-old daughter, Gladys, was suspended for leaving school with her mother, but without permission. Eugenie objected that her rights as a parent superceded the school’s rules, and would not let Gladys sign the apology that its principal demanded as a condition of reinstatement. At a school board meeting, at which both sides made their cases, the Scherers were accompanied by their attorney, and by one Abigail Scott Duniway: “Mrs. Duniway believed that the daughter should be reinstated, and that, to avoid any unpleasantness, a slight reprimand should be passed on the mother for her action. She did not believe Gladys should be compelled to make an apology for following the instructions of her mother.” In the end, the Scherers relented, the apology was accepted, and Gladys was reinstated (Morning Oregonian 19 Dec. 1894).">111 is noted as a newspaper writer of merit. Miss Edith Train<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_112_64" id="identifier_112_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(c. 1857-?): born Illinois; daughter of Leonard R. and Sarah Train; family moved to Iowa, c. 1868; worked for father, editor, Fort Dodge Times; secretary and treasurer, Upper Des Moines Editorial Association, 1891-95; active in Webster County Woman Suffrage Association, 1891; elected to Fort Dodge school board, 1893; elected Iowa delegate to N.A.W.S.A. convention, 1893; earned teaching certificate, Multnomah County, 1900; active in Methodist Episcopal Church (U.S. Census: 1870: Iowa Series M593, Roll 394, Page 264, Subpage B; Woman’s Tribune 25 Oct. 1890, 15 Aug. 1891; Woman’s Standard Nov. 1891, Apr. 1893, Dec. 1893; Morning Oregonian 21 Apr. 1900; Sunday Oregonian 3 Apr. 1904; Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette 19 July 1895). Train probably moved to Portland late in 1895 or sometime in 1896; her first letter to the Morning Oregonian, “[i]n behalf of the women of East Portland,” appeared on February 11, 1897–not long before this speech probably was given.">112 of this city is also a trained newspaper woman. Mrs. Lucy A. Mallory<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_113_64" id="identifier_113_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lucy A. Rose Mallory (1846-1920): daughter of Aaron Rose and Minerva Kelley (or Kellogg); mother died at Lucy’s birth; father remarried fifteen months later and family emigrated to Oregon from Michigan, 1851, settling on donation claim that became Roseburg, named after family; married Rufus Mallory (1831-1914), prominent attorney and politician, who arrived in Jacksonville from Iowa, 1859, on June 24, 1860, when 14, in Roseburg, where he had taught school for fifteen months and she had been his pupil; he was state attorney, 1860, 1862-66, in state legislature, 1862, U.S. Congress, 1867-69, Speaker of Oregon House, 1872, U.S. District Attorney for Oregon, 1874-82, twice delegate to Republican National Convention, 1868, 1888, twice president of Republican state conventions; she founded, edited and published (for more than thirty years) “Companion-Papers,” World’s Advance Thought and Universal Republic, advocating universal equality of the sexes, vegetarianism, universal language and money, universal peace, cooperation and love; firm believer in spiritualism, gave psychic readings in rear of Mallory Hotel, where she also published her magazine; moved to San Jose, California, following 1917 death of only son, Elmer E. Mallory; died in San Jose in September (Corning 156; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 541-42; Hines 273-74; Gaston, Portland 2: 5-7; Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 98; Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days,” Oregon Journal 12 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 142-45; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919, 4 Sept. 1920; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 4: 45).">113, also of Portland, is editor and publisher of The World’s Advance Thought<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_114_64" id="identifier_114_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The World’s Advance-Thought and the Universal Republic (1876-1918); advocated a host of progressive ideas, including spiritualism, anti-vivisection, vegetarianism, anti-vaccination, universal equality of sexes including equal suffrage, proportional representation, initiative and referendum, Australian ballot, language, money, peace, love, cooperation, and league of nations. Two childhood experiences probably contributed to Rose Mallory’s interest in these causes. First, her stepmother treated her and her older sister, Emily, with “unbelievable cruelty,” threatening to kill their father if they told; perhaps in compensation, she often dreamed of her mother, whose presence “was as real to me as if she had been in the flesh.” Second, her childhood playmate, Solomon, an Umqua Indian boy, “a mystic and a philosopher,” taught her that “the animals and trees and flowers had personalities like people”; “as a child . . . I used to talk to and with the birds and wild flowers” (Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days”, Oregon Journal 11 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 143-45; Mott 3: 82; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919).">114, an able, aptly named literary and reform magazine, for which she does all the work of desk and composing room herself and does it in first class style. Miss Frances E. Gotshall<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_115_64" id="identifier_115_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances E. Gotshall Robinson: founder and publisher of Pacific Empire, one enterprise of family business, Gotshall Printing Co., whose “senior member” was father, John F. Gotshall, and included (brothers?) Jeremiah F. and Lucius E.; longtime member, O.S.E.S.A.; member of Portland W.C.T.U., wrote memorial tribute to Frances Willard in February 24, 1898, issue; founding member, Portland Woman’s Club; active in Oregon Women’s Press Club, serving as treasurer, 1915-17 (Pacific Empire 4 Nov. 1897, 24 Feb. 1898; Portland City Directory, 1897; Writer’s Project; Mss 1511, Box 11, OR Hist. Soc.).">115, founder and for a year and a half the publisher of The Pacific Empire<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_116_64" id="identifier_116_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Inaugural issue August 16, 1895, with Scott Duniway as editor; last issue July 7, 1898. It merged into the art and literary magazine, Drift, in August and September, which in turn was consolidated with the well-known Pacific Monthly that October, which eventually merged with Sunset magazine of San Francisco after the June, 1911, issue (Powers 720-21).">116, is a facile and ready writer, whose regular usefulness is compelled to succumb to delicate health. Miss Alix Josephine Muller<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_117_64" id="identifier_117_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(c. 1875-1904): born St. Paul, Minnesota; daughter of John B. Muller; sister Jessie; moved to Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, as child; after completing education, returned to St. Paul, engaging in newspaper work; Pioneer Press, 1895; associate editor, Spring Valley, Minnesota, Vidette; later worked for Western newspapers for five years, including in Los Angeles, then Salt Lake City; coauthor, History of the Police and Fire Departments of the Twin Cities, 1899; moved to Oklahoma City, February, 1904, where she died of tuberculosis, April 6; completing another book, Lives of Great Men and Women, at death (Pioneer Press 9 Apr. 1904; Upham and Dunlap 532).">117, formerly of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, who recently purchased The Pacific Empire, has been suddenly compelled to renounce journalism for the same reason.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_118_64" id="identifier_118_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The preceding two paragraphs fix this address between February and the late fall of 1897. Gotshall launched the Pacific Empire on August 16, 1895, and remained its publisher through February 11, 1897 (vol. 3, no. 20), exactly the “year and a half” to which Scott Duniway refers; the latter issue announces the transfer to Muller and indicates that Scott Duniway will remain as editor. (It also attributes the transfer to “the growing demands of my publishing business consuming so much of my time,” and does not mention health problems. The Woman’s Tribune of February 20, 1897, also reports these events, in the same manner.) By September 2, 1897 (vol. 3, no. 25), however, the paper had changed hands again: Scott Duniway announces her relinquishment of editorial control “to the bright young women who comprise its new management,” Lischen Maud Cogswell Konoff Miller* and Catherine C. Cogswell**, both of Eugene. The sequence of Muller’s journalistic career is unclear. Her acquisition of the Pacific Empire probably occurred late, and may well have been her final newspaper venture (before turning to books and, possibly, returning to St. Paul). But whether Muller had “renounced journalism” or only the Pacific Empire by September, that evidently only four issues of what had been a weekly publication appeared in a space of almost seven months speaks to her longstanding battle with consumption, which would claim her life seven years later. (These issues also did not survive: They are missing from the Oregon Historical Society, University of Oregon, Multnomah County Central Library, and Library of Congress collections.) *Lischen Maud Cogswell Konoff Miller (1858-1915): writer, poet, editor and publisher, the daughter of John Cogswell and Mary Frances Gay Cogswell, pioneers of 1846, was born on a farm between Leaburg and Thurston, on the McKenzie River in Lane county, known as Lizzie Cogswell, and grew up in Coburg. In 1885, she became the wife (her second marriage, the first being to James Konoff) of George Melvin Miller of Eugene and sister-in-law of poet Joaquin Miller and his wife, Theresa Dyer (“Minnie Myrtle”) Miller. Her brother-in-law’s success inspired her to take up writing as a career, and she became “one of the best-know literary women on the Pacific Coast.” She edited the Woman’s Club Journal and contributed to the Oregonian. She stayed with the Pacific Empire through its metamorphosis into Drift and merger with Pacific Monthly, which she founded, edited (1898-1901), and for which she was assistant manager, although arguably not as responsible for the latter’s success as manager William Bittle Wells. Later, she also contributed to Sunset and headed the woman’s department of a Eugene paper until an illness in the spring of 1915. She was active in the Fortnightly Club. Not in full health after the death of her only daughter, Mary, in 1902, and noticeably ill for seven years, she died in September after a four-month struggle (Corning 166; Who’s Who in Oregon 151; Fred Lockley, “Men and Institutions of the Oregon Country,” 11 May 1919, in Scrapbook #76: 181, OR Hist. Soc.; Powers 720-21; Scrapbook #53: 158, OR Hist. Soc.; cf. Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc., which records that the Cogswells came to California in 1845 and Oregon in 1853). **Catherine C. Cogswell Thorne (?-1928): born Milwaukee, Wisconsin, daughter of French/Russian mother and English father, attorney; reared by mother, mostly abroad, educated in convents and private tutors; at 17, left a widow with two small sons, both of whom died tragically at 7 and 9; became actress following their deaths, leading lady for Frohman for many years and playing in many European countries; came to Eugene, 1894; married J. Frederick Thorne, writer/engineer, editor, Pacific Ports of Seattle; went to Porcupine, Alaska, during gold rush, 1911, and assisted him in editing Porcupine Bulletin; died in Eugene; buried in Mary Gay Cogswell Cemetery (Morning Oregonian 28 Nov. 1928; Powers 721; Mitchell). Gotshall would return as a third editor in vol. 4, no. 25 (March 3, 1898) until the end of the publication’s run. Following the September, 1897, transfer to Miller and Cogswell, Scott Duniway briefly contributed a column called “Mrs. Duniway’s Headquarters” but, undoubtedly, was sorely disappointed with a marked change in editorial direction. Powers comments: “This had been a woman’s suffrage paper. ‘The Pacific Empire, however, was at no time after passing under Mrs. Miller’s control, the organ of the suffragists. . .’” (720). Abigail’s final column appeared on December 30, 1897, together with the final chapter of her serialized novel, “The Old and the New,” although she contributed a sort of letter to the editor in the “Open Court” column in the following issue (6 Jan. 1898).">118 Helen H. Gardener<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_119_64" id="identifier_119_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Alice Chenoweth Smart Day (1853-1925): born Winchester, Virginia; father abandoned Episcopalianism to become Methodist circuit rider in Indiana; graduated Cincinnati, Ohio, Normal School, 1873; married Charles Selden Smart, 1875; moved to New York City, c. 1880, and became friends with famed agnostic Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, publishing freethinking Men, Women and Gods, and Other Lectures, 1885, under pseudonym “Helen Hamilton Gardener”; well-known “Sex in Brain,” 1888, refuted theories of former Surgeon General Dr. William A. Hammond that brain size proved women’s inferiority; contributed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, 1895; famous novel, Is This Your Son, My Lord?, 1890, targeted double standard in campaign to legalize prostitution and in shockingly low age of consent laws; contributor of articles on social ills to Harper’s, Popular Science Monthly, Belford’s Magazine, Free Thought Magazine, Arena (where she was briefly co-editor, 1897); following Smart’s death, 1901, remarried to Col. Selden Allen Day, 1902; at urging of Anna Howard Shaw and others, joined campaign for federal suffrage amendment; following N.A.W.S.A. defections to Alice Paul’s militant Congressional Union, appointed to reorganized Congressional Committee, 1913; vice-chair, 1919; N.A.W.S.A. vice-president, 1917, she was its chief lobbyist with Wilson administration, wielding crucial behind-the-scenes influence that came to fruition with ratification, 1920; appointed to U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1920; died of chronic myocarditis (Washburn).">119, of social purity fame, until recently one of the editors of the Arena, is one of the first women to enjoy the distinction of an editorial chair on any of the great Reviews. Mrs. Isgrigg<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_120_64" id="identifier_120_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Rose Donnelly Isgrigg (1861-1927): born Indianapolis; married Daniel Lynn Isgrigg (1856-1932), train dispatcher, member, Dunsmuir Improvement Club and school trustee, c. 1883; delegate from Siskiyou County to first Northern Californian Teachers’ Association convention, 1897; opposed compulsory vaccinations in Berkeley schools; member, Dunsmuir Progressive Euchre Club; died Los Angeles; daughters Anna Corinne (1885-1903), Jean Malese (1890-1966), and Esther Elizabeth (1887-1962), and son Francis Lynn (1884-1969) (“Family Group Record“; “Elizabeth Rose Donnelly“; “Siskiyou County Great Register 1894“; Bennion, Equal 168; Dunsmuir Herald 2 July 1897, 9 July 1897; San Francisco Call 24 Aug. 1897, 10 Sept. 1904; New York Times 12 Jan. 1913).">120 of California is editor and publisher of the Dunsmuir Herald<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_121_64" id="identifier_121_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A weekly, first published in July, 1896, a printer named Savage may have had a hand in its launch; early on, it was edited by Henry Malcolm Calkins; it folded in 1899 (Bennion, Equal 168; Dunsmuir News 25 July 1896). One year after its debut, on July 16, 1897 (vol. 2, no. 2), the Herald carried this odd notice: “Hereafter no one but the undersigned is authorized to transact any business for this paper. H. M. CALKINS”. This notice was repeated for two months. Then, on September 24 (vol. 2, no. 11), a new notice appeared: “With this week’s issue, I assume full charge of the HERALD, Henry M. Calkins [sic] relations with the paper have been severed and hereafter the business will be conducted in my name. ELIZABETH ISGRIGG”. A second notice informed readers: “The Former [sic] editor of this paper left taking the subscristion [sic] book with him and last week the mail was made up under difficulties. Any subscriber not receiving their paper please notify us and thereby confer a favor.” Together, these suggest that Elizabeth already was associated with the paper, and that there was a struggle for control, the details of which are unknown. While Calkins had been “Editor, Publisher, and Lessee,” Elizabeth was “Editor and Proprietor.” So it is possible that the Isgriggs owned the paper, even from the beginning, and found cause to terminate Calkins’ lease. Further, if oblique, evidence for this scenario is provided by the rival Dunsmuir News. The senior paper in town (founded c. 1890 by G. D. Cummings), the News was contemptuous of the upstart Herald and, as rule, studiously ignored it. But there were exceptions. Commenting on the Herald’s launch, the News editorialized: “The sheet was started for spite and is encouraged by knaves” (25 July 1896). Elsewhere in the same issue, and more to the point, an attack on its publication of a legal notice regarding a school bond issue identifies Elizabeth’s husband, Daniel, as the Herald’s publisher. Two months later, alluding to Elizabeth’s prominence, the News spat: “It down the street says that its henpecked sheet is a newspaper. No one else ever considered it a newspaper” (5 Sept. 1896). Another year later, noting Calkins’ demise, it commented simply: “We see that sister Isgrigg is back running her old sheet” (25 Sept. 1897). In any event, Elizabeth officially published only five issues: Beginning on October 29 (vol. 2, no. 17), Daniel is identified editor and proprietor. If Scott Duniway is referring only to Elizabeth’s official tenure, then the date of this speech is fixed more precisely (cf. supra, n. 118) as late September or October, 1897.">121. Charlotte Fowler Wells<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_122_64" id="identifier_122_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1814-1901): phrenologist, publisher; born Cohocton, New York; took up phrenology, study of physiological, especially cranial, determinants of character and its modification, in 1830s; brothers Orson Squire and Lorenzo Niles Fowler were first and most important popularizers of “practical phrenology” for treatment of insanity, education, personal adjustment, marriage, and sex; she joined their permanent center in New York City, 1837, remaining in family business for more than sixty years, including publishing activities; married Dr. Samuel Robert Wells, vegetarian and hydrotherapist, 1844; they obtained her brothers’ interests in business, 1855, helped found American Institute of Phrenology, and were “the mainstays of phrenology in America”; she carried on as sole proprietor and later president of firm following Wells’ death, 1875; still writing articles for Phrenological Journal and lecturing at Institute in her eighties; proponent of equal rights, assisted New York Medical College for Women; early believer in spiritualism, medium for New York Circle in 1850s (Isaacs).">122 has been connected with the Phrenological Journal<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_123_64" id="identifier_123_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Established by Nathan Allen, a young medical student, in Philadelphia, 1838; sold to Fowler brothers of New York, 1841; joined in 1852 by Wells, their colleague in publishing the Water-Cure Journal; publication ceased, 1911; “phrenology” meaning craniology, the journal specialized in “analyses of the mental characteristics of famous persons, illustrating its articles by portraits”; it absorbed Life Illustrated, another Fowler and Wells publication begun in 1854, in 1861, and American Kindergarten Magazine of New York in 1887 (Mott 1: 447-48, 2: 42, 3: 163). Scott Duniway may have met Fowler Wells during a ten-month trip east in 1876, to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. While in New York she searched for a publisher for her recently completed epic poem, David and Anna Matson. The publisher she found was the Wells’ company; that December she was the subject of a profile in “the Phrenological”; and she contracted for a serial entitled “Why Mar the Image,” to begin in January, 1877. Abigail’s profile, eerily accurate, noted that: her brain measured 22 1/4 inches; her weight, 160 pounds, gave “ample” support, enabling the brain to work “long and hard without exhaustion”; her temperament revealed “zeal, enthusiasm, and earnestness in work,” and “the power to think, gather knowledge, to know its meaning and its use”; the breadth of her head, side to side, showed “executiveness and courage”; she “does not let up, or excuse, or palliate the truth”; she has “large Constructiveness,” so that complicated matters seem clear to her; she possesses “much poetic fancy and aesthetic taste”; she “would prefer to win people to be good rather than to scare or frighten them to right ways”; she has “strong Spirituality,” yearning for “something higher and better than this mere worldly state”; and her “large Language makes her a good talker” (“Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway”; Moynihan, Rebel 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex“).">123 of New York, for nearly half a century. Mrs. Sara A. Underwood is widely known as associate editor with her husband in liberal, or secular magazines.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cwoman-in-journalism%e2%80%9d-circa-february-september-1897/#footnote_124_64" id="identifier_124_64" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sara A. Francis Underwood: wife (married 1862) of Benjamin Franklin Underwood (1839-1914), for thirty years a lecturer widely known especially for espousing liberal religious thought, co-editor of Boston Index (organ of Free Religious Association), 1880-86, editor of Philosophic Journal (organ of Psychical Science Congress), 1893-95, and chair, Congress of Evolutionists (Who was Who 1263).">124 I am painfully aware that my list of women in journalism, long as it is, is absurdly incomplete; and I sincerely hope that in the discussion that is to follow we shall hear of many that I have overlooked or forgotten. It was my intention when I took up my pen, only yesterday afternoon, to make my first move toward preparing this paper, to confine it, chiefly, to “journalism as a business for women”; but the pages grew to the prescribed limit of 20 minutes before I was aware that I had not gone beyond these “introductory remarks.” Sometime, since there can no longer be any doubt that women are in journalism to stay, I will, if this august body sees fit in its wisdom to grant me the opportunity, take pleasure in presenting a practical discourse of which I have merely given you a text. NOTES This subject naturally was of longstanding personal interest to Abigail. More than twenty years earlier the New Northwest had printed a similar history of “Women in Journalism” on its front page (24 Dec. 1875). By 1886, approximately five hundred women were estimated to be working in some editorial capacity on American newspapers (Karolevitz 176-77). So Abigail’s catalogue eleven years later, lengthy as it is in mentioning some sixty-five women journalists, only scratched the surface. Notable omissions include Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893), African-American from Delaware who helped found and edit the Provincial Freeman in Ontario, Canada, in the mid-1850s (E. Lewis), and Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm (1815-1884), who edited and published a series of newspapers, first in Pittsburgh and then in St. Cloud, Minnesota (Tyler, “Swisshelm”; Ashley, 1690-1872 430-35; Endres, “Pittsburgh”). Huxman, “Woman’s Journal“ 104. Leslie Roberts lists “Woman in Journalism” as one speech given at the June, 1896, Congress of Women in Portland, although she doesn’t identify Scott Duniway as the speaker and although the current text, which describes events that postdate the congress, would have to be a more recent version (139). Abigail also spoke on journalism before the Portland Woman’s Club on May 7, 1896 or 1897 (“Portland Woman’s Club–Directories and Yearbooks”, Mss 1084, OR Hist. Soc.). Given the period of a few months within which it must have been delivered (see infra, n. 118, n. 121), it is conceivable that this speech is the one given on the latter occasion (and that Mss 1084’s uncertain date can be resolved in favor of 1897); more probably, it closely approximates that speech but was given some months later. In any case, Abigail’s interest in this subject was personal but not idiosyncratic; for comparison, see Chapter II of History of Woman Suffrage 1: 43-49, and Susan E. Dickinson, “Woman in Journalism,” in Meyer 128-38. Founded January, 1849, in Seneca Falls, New York, under the auspices of a temperance society, also advocating woman suffrage and dress reform; moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, 1854, where, upon a strike by printers in protest of a female typesetter, Jenks Bloomer (infra, n. 6) fired them all and hired staff of women; moved to Richmond, Indiana, 1855, and entrusted to Mary B. Birdsall; discontinued, 1856, when the Bloomers went to Iowa (Mott 2: 50-51; Hinck; B. Smith). Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894): temperance reformer, editor and suffragist; began career as a journalist writing articles for husband’s newspaper, Seneca County Courier, of Seneca Falls, New York, and to local temperance journal, Water Bucket; officer in newly formed Ladies’ Temperance Society, 1848, which planned newspaper that became Lily in January, 1849; published articles by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on woman’s rights; began writing such articles herself, March, 1850; began lecturing for temperance, 1852; active in Good Templars; moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, 1853, where she became assistant editor of Western Home Visitor, a reform weekly, and continued to edit Lily; settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa, April, 1855; active in relief work during Civil War; president, Iowa Woman Suffrage Society, 1871; worked for Iowa legal code of 1873, guaranteeing married women’s property rights (W. Lewis; Willard and Livermore 1: 99-100). Jenks Bloomer’s connection with the famous pantaloon-style costume was not quite “capricious.” When Elizabeth Smith Miller visited Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls in the winter of 1850-51 wearing the new fashion, which Cady Stanton also adopted, Jenks Bloomer defended it in the Lily. As the New York Tribune and other newspapers picked up the story, “a fad of national proportions developed. Subscriptions to the Lily doubled almost overnight, and its editor was deluged with letters asking for patterns”; and Jenks Bloomer herself wore “no other costume” for “some six or eight years” subsequently (W. Lewis 180; Warbasse). Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott (1823-1904): born Pompey, New York; daughter of Dr. Thaddeus C. Clarke and Deborah Baker Clarke; descendant of renowned preacher and theologian Rev. Jonathan Edwards; moved to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, 1842; graduate, Greenwood Institute; popular columnist and correspondent for leading newspapers and magazines of day, including antislavery National Era, Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s Monthly, New York Times, Lady’s Home Journal; pen name “Grace Greenwood”; published Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, 1850; married Leander Lippincott, 1853 (later divorced); published Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in Europe and History of My Pets, 1854; supported abolition and woman’s rights; founded Little Pilgrim, one of the first children’s magazines, and wrote children’s books; living in Washington, D.C., raised money for North during Civil War; Lincoln called her “the little patriot”; lectured on peace, prison reform, and capital punishment on lyceum circuit; died New Rochelle, New York (Welter, “Lippincott”; Ashley, 1690-1872 303-09; “Sara Jane Clarke (Grace Greenwood)“). Mary E. Clemmer Ames Hudson (1831-1884): journalist and author, born and raised in Utica, New York; married Daniel Ames, 1851; desperately unhappy, they separated, 1865, and divorced, 1874; began contributing letters to newspapers in 1859; best known for “Woman’s Letter From Washington” in the Independent, a New York religious weekly, eschewing “social gossip” in favor of pointed political commentary, 1866-84; no pen name; worked for Brooklyn Daily Union, 1869-72; resumed writing for Independent, 1872; also authored volume of poetry and three novels; thrown from carriage, 1878, never completely recovering from injuries; married journalist Edmund Hudson, 1883; believed that women had higher moral values than men and could comment on public affairs in the name of morality; supported woman suffrage but did not actively participate in woman’s rights movement (J. Andrews; Ashley, 1873-1900 3-7; Willard and Livermore 1: 400; “Mary Clemmer (Mrs. Hudson) Ames”). Martha D. Lincoln (1838-?): born near Richfield Springs, New York; at 16, began contributing to Dover, New Hampshire, Morning Star; married H. M. Lincoln, 1858; moved to Washington, D.C., 1871; following financial crisis of 1871-72, took up journalism in earnest, contributing to numerous papers in and outside Washington, including New York Times, New York Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer; helped organize Woman’s National Press Association, 1882; also authored verse, biographical sketches of famous women, and poems for children; delegate, International Peace Conference, 1891, 1892; president, American Society of Authors, 1892 (Willard and Livermore 2: 462-63). Sara Payson Willis Parton (1811-1872): author and columnist; born Portland, Maine; educated in Boston and at Catharine Esther Beecher’s seminary in Hartford, Connecticut; following a series of personal tragedies that left her a widow, and then a divorcee, she began writing witty material for small newspapers in Boston, 1851, soon reprinted, under the pseudonym “Fannie Fern”; collections of these writings, Fern Leaves From Fanny’s Port-Folio (1853, 1854), became best-selling parlor-table books; became one of America’s first woman columnists at the New York Ledger, 1855, earning an unheard-of $100 a week; she remained at the Ledger for the rest of her life, reaching half a million readers weekly; her columns dealt sympathetically with domestic issues, championing intellectual equality and condemning the double standard in morality, overly large families and excessive housework; came to support suffrage by 1858; helped found Sorosis, 1868 (Schlesinger, “Parton”; Ashley, 1690-1872 358-62). Jane Cunningham Croly (1829-1901): born Market-Harborough, Leicestershire, England; came to U.S. with family, 1841; pen name “Jennie June”; created first syndicated woman’s column, “Parlor and Side-walk Gossip,” 1857; managed woman’s department, New York World, 1862-72; chief staff writer, Demorests’ woman’s magazines, 1860-87; published Jennie June’s American Cookery Book, 1866; advocated woman’s financial independence and economic equality, insisting that women must earn their rights through work; instrumental in woman’s club movement; after she was refused entrance to New York Press Club’s “men-only” reception for Charles Dickens, founded “Sorosis,” first woman’s club, 1868; president, 1870, 1875-86; called national convention that resulted in formation of General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1889; founded and became president, Women’s Press Club of New York, 1889; authored History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America, 1898; professor, journalism and literature, Rutgers University; died New York City (Schlesinger, “Croly”; Ashley, 1873-1900 67-69; “Jane Cunningham Croly”). A reference to Emily Pitts Stevens, editor of the Pioneer, where Scott Duniway “emerged into journalism” as Oregon editor, shortly before launching the New Northwest. Emily A. Pitts Stevens (c. 1844-?): moved to San Francisco from New York, 1865, to teach at Miel Institute; purchased half-interest in California Weekly Mercury, 1869, and transformed it into West’s first suffrage paper, renamed Pioneer, “a woman’s paper produced entirely by women, on the basis of equal pay for equal work”; married August K. Stevens, c. 1870; conducted first meeting of California Woman’s State Suffrage Association, January, 1870; president, 1872; organized Woman Suffrage party of the Pacific Coast, 1872, and supported presidential candidacy of George Francis Train; a supporter of the liberal Anthony/Stanton wing of the suffrage movement; repeatedly accused of practicing free-love doctrines; vocal opponent of “Holland bill” that would have licensed prostitution in California; abandoned Pioneer, 1873, due to ill health; founded Seaman’s League, 1874; temperance advocate in later life, lecturing and serving as grand vice-templar for Good Templars, working and writing for W.C.T.U., joining Prohibition party in 1882, and leading 1888 effort to have W.C.T.U. endorse Prohibition party (Bennion, Equal 57-62; cf. Willard and Livermore 2: 686). Joseph Pulitzer’s paper (infra, n. 42). Begun in 1893, lasting three years; it was the successor to Home-Maker, which Cunningham Croly had taken over from Marion Harland, and was absorbed by Lotos, all being New York publications (Mott 4: 356). Published from January, 1865, to December, 1899, under four slightly varying titles; founded by William Jennings Demorest, a leading prohibitionist; popularized by tissue paper dress patterns stapled into the magazine; Cunningham Croly was an assistant editor, conducting the “Ladies’ Club” department of the wide-ranging magazine from its inception until about 1887 (Mott 3: 325-27; Gottlieb, “Demorest’s”). The most prominent women’s magazine of its day, founded by Louis A. Godey in July, 1830, and published until August, 1898. Its circulation was extraordinary for its time, peaking at 150,000 just before the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale was literary editor, 1837-46. All the popular writers of the time appeared, particularly during the magazine’s finest literary period, 1837-50. A highly sentimental magazine, it avoided social and political issues, including slavery; there even was a taboo against references to the war. Cunningham Croly’s association with it was brief (1887-88), a failed effort to revive a declining magazine that had been surpassed in popularity (Mott 1: 580-94; Cronin). Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). Published from January 8, 1868, to February 17, 1872. Anthony was owner and Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury editors from 1868 to 1870. Its original platform was broadly reform-minded, including “educated suffrage, irrespective of sex or color; the eight-hour day; abolition of standing armies; science, not superstition; personal purity, practical education; cold water versus alcohol and medicine; greenbacks, an American system of finance; organized labor,” etc. After the first year, it focused on “the woman question.” Never financially stable, it was undercut further by the founding of the Woman’s Journal in Boston in 1870, prompting Anthony in May to convey the paper to Laura Curtis Bullard, meanwhile absorbing a debt of approximately $10,000. “The paper immediately became less bellicose” until, in October, 1871, it was finally disposed of to J. N. Hallock, publisher of a Unitarian weekly called the Liberal Christian, who turned it into a home journal devoted to “‘women’s rights and duties,’ with the emphasis on ‘duties’” (Mott 3: 391-95; Gottlieb, “Revolution”; Dow, “Revolution“). Published 1870-1931. Edited, 1870-73, by Mary Ashton Rice Livermore, who merged her Chicago Agitator, begun a year earlier, into it. After Rice Livermore’s retirement, it was conducted for more than twenty years by Lucy Stone and husband Henry Browne Blackwell, and then by Alice Stone Blackwell after her mother’s death in 1893. It became the Woman Citizen in 1917, the year in which it was moved to New York and Virginia Roderick became editor, but later resumed the old name (Mott 3: 94, 4: 355-56; Spencer; Huxman, “Woman’s Journal“). (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). (1857-1950): born Orange, New Jersey; graduated Boston University, 1881; for 35 years, editor of Woman’s Journal; for almost 20 years, recording secretary, N.A.W.S.A.; championed Armenian refugees, Friends of Russian Freedom, W.C.T.U., Anti-Vivesection Society, Women’s Trade Union League, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, American Peace Society, and many other causes (Blodgett; Willard and Livermore 1: 90; Lord passim). Florence Mary Burlingame Adkinson (1847-c. 1925): also known as “Mary” and “Lu”; born 1 Jan. 1847 in Noble, Ohio; daughter of Stephen W. Burlingame and Mary Gibbs; graduated Moores Hill College, Lawrenceburg, Indiana, 1867; first suffrage activity was to call a convention in Lawrenceburg; in 1871-72, lectured on suffrage and temperance in Ohio, and held meetings in southeast Indiana; officer in both Indianapolis and Indiana woman suffrage associations; secretary, Women’s Department, State Board of Agriculture, in Indianapolis, 1884; an “acceptable” speaker, she was better known as a writer; contributor, Indianapolis Journal; wrote for Sentinel, a temperance paper, and Chicago Inter-Ocean, 1880-84; began writing for Woman’s Journal in 1884, became associate editor with Vol. 21, No. 26 (28 June 1890), and began “Women in the Press” column, 1894; wrote for close friend Alice Stone Blackwell’s Woman’s Column, 1890-1904; contributor, Woman’s Standard, 1905; member, New England Woman’s Press Association and founding member, National Woman’s Press Association; married William Perry Adkinson (1845-1903), who also graduated Moores Hill College in 1867, 4 June 1873; one daughter, June (Burt xxi; History of Woman Suffrage 3: 551; National Citizen and Ballot Box Jan. 1881; Susan E. Dickinson, “Woman in Journalism,” in Meyer 135; “Adkinson, Florence Burlingame, 1847-1925?“; Chris McHenry, “A Brief History of Dearborn County”; “Ancestry 11137”; Indiana Genealogist Dec. 2009: 167; Lord passim). Also “Catharine.” She became associate editor in March, 1891; joined New England Woman’s Press Association, 1890; lengthy service on executive committee and as auditor; contributor, Woman’s Column, 1892-96 (Lord passim). (1847-1942): born Niagara County, New York; as an infant, her family moved to northern Illinois, where she started her writing career as editor of a local paper; subsequent posts in St. Louis, 1876, on Cincinnati Commercial, 1879, as art critic, 1880, and then literary editor, 1885, of Boston Traveler, and as editor of Boston Budget, 1890; became freelance author, 1893, contributing to periodicals such as Harper’s, the Arena, the Independent; wrote idealized columns about Boston for New York Graphic, Chicago Inter-Ocean, and New Orleans Times-Democrat; wrote The World Beautiful, stressing homely philosophy and the spiritual life, 1894-96; From Dreamland Sent, a book of poems, 1895; A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1899; three books on Spiritualist topics, precipitated by psychical experiences related to the death of Kate Field (infra, n. 68), and contributor to the National Spiritualist, Chicago; also interested in other new religious movements, including Bahaism, the Theosophical Society of Katherine Tingley, and especially the New Thought movement (Hoxie; Lord passim). Published in Chicago (1860-1929): journalist, translator, and author; contributor, Boston Daily Advertiser; authored The World and Its People, Book III: Our Own Country, a history for juveniles, 1894, and a book of poetry, Gold Stories of ’49, 1896; joined editorial desk, Boston Evening Transcript, c. 1890; translated George du Maurier’s second novel, Trilby, 1895; translated Benito Pérez Galdós’ Saragossa, 1899; contributed two poems and essay on José Maria de Heredia the Elder to Vol. 9 of the Bookman (Mar.-Aug. 1899); authored Mary Paget, a “slight and amateurish romance,” 1900; translated Armando Palacio Valdés’ The Joy of Captain Ribot, 1900; translation of Valdés’ José, 1902, was “wooden”; authored Saint Jeanne d’Arc, 1922 (M. Mansfield 33-34; Gilder and Gilder 39-40; Dial 1 July 1900: 23; New York Tribune 17 May 1902; Lord 29, 32). In his autobiography, Edwin Francis Edgett, who became the Transcript‘s literary and dramatic critic in 1894, commented: “The staff of editorial writers at that time was completed by a young woman, Minna Caroline Smith, who was as good a companion as the others. Her special duty was to write brightly and lightly on the odds and ends of topics that were supposed to be too trivial for the masculine brain” (102). Established 1830 (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 4: 244). Published, with three somewhat varying names, from May, 1882, to April, 1923. Founded in Albany, New York, by William Bailey Howland, and devoted to a variety, and constantly increasing list, of recreational pursuits. A gentleman’s outdoor magazine, Theodore Roosevelt was to become both subject and writer in its pages, and Jack London’s White Fang was serialized there in 1906 (Mott 4: 633-38). Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln (1844-1921): teacher, writer and lecturer on cookery; born South Attleboro, Massachusetts; in December, 1879, became teacher at Boston Cooking School, opened previous March under auspices of Woman’s Education Association of Boston, founded 1872; her first book, Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book, 1884, a bestseller that saw many editions, was more than collection of recipes, covering complete curriculum of the school including course plans, outlines of sample lectures, examination questions, and sections on chemistry, physiology and hygiene; later editions inaccurately identified her as school’s first principal; resigned January, 1885; taught at Lasell Seminary, Auburndale, Massachusetts 1885-89; thereafter devoted herself to writing and lecturing nationwide; active in New England Woman’s Press Association from 1889 until death (Wilson; Patricia B. Mitchell, “Mary J. B. Lincoln, Cook and Educator”; Lord passim). Estelle Minerva Hatch Merrill (1858-?): born Jefferson, Maine; daughter of Gilman E. and Celenda S. Hatch; graduated Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Massachusetts; taught for two years in Jefferson, then three years in Hyde Park, Massachusetts; contributor to Boston Transcript as “Jean Kincaid”; first regular journalistic position was with Boston Globe; married Samuel Merrill, 1887; founder, Cantabrigia Club; charter member, New England Woman’s Press Association; active in other club work, including Wheaton Seminary Club, Fathers’ and Mothers’ Club, and Woman’s Charity Club; active in National Household Economic Association, organized 1893; edited Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge Authors, 1896; co-editor, with Mary Wood Allen, of American Motherhood, a Boston magazine (Howe 375-76; Willard 287, 291; Lord passim). New England Kitchen Magazine, 1894-1908, of Boston, established by Merrill and Anna Barrows. It became American Kitchen Magazine from 1895-1903; having absorbed Motherhood in 1903, it became Home Science Magazine until 1905; then Modern Housekeeping until 1906; and Everyday Housekeeping until 1908 (Mott 4: 363-64). Bailey Lincoln’s ten-year association began in 1894; a year later she became part owner and culinary editor. Elisabeth Sophia Merritt Gosse: born Salem, Massachusetts, to Henry and Elisabeth Hood Merritt; educated Chelsea High School, Salem Normal School, and Rockford [Illinois] Woman’s College; married Charles Harrison Gosse; society correspondent for Boston Transcript and others, Bar Harbor, Maine, 1888; joined Boston Herald, fall, 1888, working in five different departments; established “Among the Women’s Clubs” and “Colonial and Patriotic” departments; contributor, New York Mail and Express, New York Herald, North American Review, New England Magazine, Harper’s Bazar, Wide Awake, and Lippincott’s; corresponding editor, Club Woman’s Magazine; honorary vice-president for life, New England Woman’s Press Association; founder, Boston Woman’s Press Club; “an enthusiastic organizer of women’s clubs”; president, Boston Business League, 1903-05 (Howe 442-44; Lord passim). Scott Duniway has confused the two Heralds here (supra n. 34). Helen Watterson Moody (1860-1928): born Cleveland, Ohio; daughter, William R. and Sarah Ruggies Watterson; graduated University of Wooster, 1883; after graduation, worked for two years for Cleveland Leader and Sun; assistant professor, rhetoric and English, University of Wooster, 1885-89; wrote “Woman About Town” column, New York Evening Sun, 1889-91; married Winfield Scott Moody, Jr., 1891; editorial writer, Scribner’s Magazine, Century Magazine, Harper’s, McClure’s, others; first woman editor for McClure’s syndicate; author, The Unquiet Sex, 1898, and A Child’s Letters to Her Husband, 1903; opposed woman suffrage (Willard and Livermore 2: 513-14; Leonard 572). The New York Sun, edited by Moses Y. Beach (Mott 1: 781). Maria Louise Pool (1841-1898): author of numerous short stories and nineteen novels, frequently about dogs and New England life; born Rockland, Massachusetts; viewing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at Boston Museum, at about age of ten, kindled her interest in dramatic writing; began writing stories for Waverly Magazine when about 16, then for Galaxy; moved to Brooklyn, 1870; returned to Massachusetts, 1877; wrote “Ransom Sketches” and series of stories later collected as “In Buncombe County” for New York Tribune; other works included “Boss and Other Dogs,” “A Vacation in a Buggy,” “Dally,” “Against Human Nature,” “Roweny in Boston,” “Mrs. Keats Bradford,” “Katharine North,” “The Two Salomes,” “Out of Step,” and “The Red Bridge Neighborhood”; “a woman suffragist in principle and a friend to all wise reforms, although she never espoused any of them publicly”; returned to Rockland, 1894; died of pneumonia; she and her “literary companion” of thirty-two years, Caroline M. Branson, are buried together in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Rockland (“Containing A Brief Sketch Of The Life Of Maria Louise Pool, By Dr. Amand M. Hale, Published in 1899“). The New York Tribune, founded and edited by Horace Greeley. Isabel Allderdice Sloan Mallon (1859-1898): wrote gossip column in New York Star called “Bab’s Babble,” eventually syndicated by Edward William Bok; many thought that Bok wrote the column, and he was lampooned in the press; when he assumed editorship of the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1889, Bok began a department called “Side Talks With Girls,” a confidential advice column, using pseudonyms “Ruth Ashmead,” then “Ruth Ashmore”; confidential correspondence quickly became embarrassing to the young bachelor, who enlisted Mallon as Ruth; she ran the department for sixteen years, until her death, receiving 158,000 letters in that time; also wrote a dress department for several years; authored The Business Girl in Every Phase of Her Life, 1895; died of pneumonia (Mott 4: 539-41; I. Ross, Ladies 21; Endres, “Ladies’ Home”; Pittsburgh Press 27 Dec. 1898). Joined New England Woman’s Press Association, 1891 (cf. I. Ross, Ladies 176; Lord 52. Elizabeth Garver Jordan (1865-1947): journalist, editor, and novelist known for interviews and people features; born Milwaukee, Wisconsin; first major interview was Caroline Scott Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison, 1890; covered Lizzie Borden trial for Joseph Pulitzer’s World; editor of Harper’s Bazar before it was taken over by William Randolph Hearst, 1900-13; novels included popular series featuring Mary Iverson; crafted plays, and was advisor/editorial director for Harper & Brothers and Goldwyn Motion Pictures; an active suffragist; autobiography is Three Rousing Cheers, 1938; never married; buried Florence, Massachusetts (I. Ross, “Jordan”; Irene Stuber, “Women of Achievement and Herstory“; “Jordan (Elizabeth Garver) Papers, 1891-1947“). Alice E. Winthrop Whitaker (1851-?): born Southbridge, Massachusetts: educated Southbridge High School, Nichols Academy (Dudley, Massachusetts); married George Mason Whitaker, 1871; twelve years assistant editor, New England Farmer; syndicated columnist; president, New England Woman’s Press Club; Professional Woman’s Club, Boston; Boston Business League; president, Winthrop (Massachusetts) Woman’s Club; president, Housekeepers’ Alliance, Washington, D.C.; League of American Pen Women; Daughters of the American Revolution (Leonard 873). Begun in 1865 in a weekly edition (considered a continuation of Fessenden’s New England Farmer, 1822-46) and also, from 1867 to 1871, in a monthly (considered a continuation of the second New England Farmer, 1848-64); purchased by George M. Whitaker, 1885; ceased in 1913 (Mott 3: 152, 4: 339). Cynthia M. Westover Alden (1858-?): born Afton, Iowa; father was a geologist/miner, and she accompanied him on prospecting tours from Mexico to Canada; graduated from State University of Colorado, then attended commercial college; went to New York City to pursue music education; became customs-house inspector; private secretary to commissioner, New York City street-cleaning department; invention of cart for carrying and dumping dirt earned her membership in Parisian Academy of Inventors; secretary, Woman’s Press Club of New York City (Willard and Livermore 2: 761-62; Burt xxii). Eliza Osborn Putnam Heaton (1860-?): born Danvers, Massachusetts; graduated Boston University, 1882, and married John L. Heaton, associate editor, Brooklyn Daily Times; an occasional contributor almost immediately, she joined editorial staff, 1886; started woman’s page of Recorder, first New York daily to focus on woman’s movements, 1891; became joint editor, Providence News, founded by her husband, September, 1891; member, Sorosis and other woman’s clubs (Willard and Livermore 1: 369-70; I. Ross, Ladies 238; Who was Who 543). Margaret Elizabeth Munson Sangster (1838-1912): magazine editor and author, born New Rochelle, New York; submitted first children’s story for publication at age 17; following Civil War, contributed prose and verse to several publications; editor, children’s page, Hearth and Home, 1873; editor, family page, Christian Intelligencer, 1876; edited “The Little Postmistress” department of Harper’s Young People, 1882-89; editor, Harper’s Bazar, 1889-99; contributor to Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Youth’s Companion, Christian Herald, and Woman’s Home Companion; focused on her Christian “mission to girlhood,” writing letters and short essays on themes such as “The Girl and Her Friends,” “Her Innocent Pleasures,” “The Girl in Business,” “When Her Prince Comes,” “The Little Home for Two,” “Shall Both Be Wage Earners?”, and “Waiting for the Angels”; opposed woman suffrage for most of her life as a threat to the family, but changed her mind c. 1910 (Mott 3: 327, 388 [n. 1], 390, 4: 45, 360, 542, 768, 769, 5: 246 [n. 1], 272; Who was Who 1078; Kindilien; Gribbin 138 [none mentions any association with St. Nicholas]). Margaret Welles Hamilton Welch (?-1904): entered journalism c. 1890, first with New York Times; edited club department, Harper’s Bazar; “witty and incisive” lecturer; her “The Economy of Reserve” showed “the superior demands of home life over club life”– “Mrs. Welch thought women attempt to accomplish entirely too much at the present time. ‘We are too busy to be hospitable and sympathetic. We do not pay enough attention to the troubles of our friends. Women should, individually, know what they should best do with their spare time. Nearly all of us are trying to do too much.'”; criticized ostentation and the “insatiate pursuit of novel amusements” in society circles; married Philip Henry Welch; two sons and two daughters; daughter, Emily Hamilton Welch, chemist, teacher, social worker; in failing health for some time, died 21 July 1904 (Club Woman Aug. 1898: 147, July 1899: 130-31; Milwaukee Journal 10 June 1891; Leonard 865; Liberty Register 22 July 1904). Published, under three slightly varying names, from November, 1873, to at least 1934, it contained a wealth of children’s literature from all the leading writers, including serials such as Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, Theodore Roosevelt’s Hero Tales From American History, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards’ Captain January, and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories. Edited for its first 30 years by Mary Mapes Dodge, author of Hans Brinker and His Silver Skates (Mott 3: 500-06). Maude Annulet Andrews Ohl (1862-?): born Taliaferro County, Georgia; grew up in Washington, Georgia; first work as journalist was a series of letters from New York City to the Atlanta Constitution; married Josiah Kingsley Ohl, also of Constitution, making home in Atlanta, 1887-96; one daughter; started woman’s department, authored society sketches, art and dramatic criticism, and essays on social topics, reforms, and charities; published poetry (Willard and Livermore 2: 545; I. Ross, Ladies 594; Who was Who 913). “A superb figure on the Herald, also, was Mrs. Carrie Washburn, member of an old Boston family. She went to Paris every year, and came back with gorgeous new attire. Her diamonds used to dazzle the men in the city room” (I. Ross, Ladies 454). (1853-1928): born Providence, Rhode Island; twenty-year career on Boston papers, first as clerk, then editor of Home Journal; left in 1892 to publish the Mahogany Tree, a short-lived amateur “ephemeral bibelot” or “little magazine,” and to write for Boston Journal and Boston Herald, mostly on theatre; moved to Paris, 1898, where she eventually became a member of Gertrude Stein’s group; took a country house, 1914, where she witnessed the Battle of the Marne and wrote A Hill Top on the Marne about the experience; other works include Told in a French Garden, 1916, On the Edge of the War Zone, 1917, Peak of the Load, 1918, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, 1919 (Mott 4: 389; I. Ross, Ladies 484-85; Who was Who 13). (1853-1927): born Rochester, New York; educated St. Mary’s Academy, Buffalo, New York; began journalism career on Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser; for five years, editor, West End Journal; assistant editor, Buffalo Catholic Union and Times, 1880-83; joined Boston Pilot as editorial assistant, fall, 1883; associate editor, 1890-1905; managing editor, 1905-08; managing editor, Boston Republic, 1908–; adjunct professor, St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1911-15; decorated by U. of Notre Dame, 1907, and by Pope Pius X, 1912; active in New England Woman’s Press Association (Willard and Livermore 1: 202-03; Who was Who 253; Lord passim). The leading Irish Catholic weekly in the U.S. (Purcell; Mott 4: 297). (1844-1890): poet, editor; born Ireland; apprentice journalist in Ireland and England until enlisted, 1863; joined Fenian Order, for which court-martialed and sentenced to twenty years, 1866; deported to Australia, 1868; with help of priest and American sailing vessels, escaped, arriving Philadelphia, 1869; employed on Boston Pilot, which he and Archbishop of Boston purchased, 1876; exerted nationwide influence for fifteen years; Democrat, writing “vigorously” about politics; proponent of Home Rule and duties of American citizenship; widely popular poet, publishing four books, 1873-86; poet for O’Connell centenary, dedication of Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Common, and dedication of Pilgrim Monument at Plymouth, 1889 (Bullard). James Jeffrey Roche (1847-1908): born Queen’s County, Ireland; removed to Prince Edward Island in infancy; St. Dunstan’s College, Charlottetown; commercial pursuits, Boston, 1866-83; assistant editor, Pilot, 1883-90; editor, 1890-05; Irish nationalist; appointed consul at Genoa by Theodore Roosevelt, 1904-07, at Berne, 1907-death (Purcell; Who was Who 1047). Upon Roche’s appointment as consul to Genoa, Conway would complete the journal’s final four years (Mott 4: 297). Mary Hannah Krout (1852-1927): born Crawfordsville, Indiana; published first verses when 10; teacher, 1872-87; associate editor, Crawfordsville Journal, 1881; subsequently worked on Peoria Saturday Evening Call, Interior, Chicago Journal, and Terre Haute Express; became correspondent for Chicago Inter-Ocean, April, 1888, writing from Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, and London, then editor of its “Woman’s Kingdom” department (Willard and Livermore 2: 442; cf. Logan 828; Who was Who 694). The first contest between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison, in which Harrison received almost 100,000 fewer popular votes but carried the Electoral College, 233 to 168. Lewis Wallace (1827-1905): soldier, lawyer, diplomat, author; served in Mexican War, 1846-47; admitted to Indiana bar, 1848; attained rank of major general of volunteers for Union in Civil War; prevented Confederate capture of Washington, D.C., at Battle of Manocacy, July 9, 1864; governor, New Mexico, 1878-81; minister to Turkey, 1881-85; wrote three historical novels, The Fair God, 1873, The Prince of India, 1893, and especially Ben-Hur, 1880, which was made into a motion picture in 1925 and then again, in spectacular fashion, by Cecil B. de Mille in 1959. Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901): Twenty-third President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland. Helen Maria Winslow (1851-1938): born Westfield, Vermont; moved to Boston, 1883, helped found New England Woman’s Press Association, 1885; wrote on woman’s topics for several Boston area papers including Transcript and Beacon; editor, Club Woman, 1897-1904, the organ of General Federation of Women’s Clubs during those years; wrote twenty-one books between 1899 and 1923 (Mott 4: 356; I. Ross, Ladies 483-84; Who was Who 1366-67; Gottlieb, “GFWC”; Lord passim). Published 1889-1909; founded and edited, for most of its run, by Benjamin Orange Flower of Illinois; devoted chiefly to religion and its relation to various social reforms; exposés on Boston slums; discussed prostitution and openly advocated birth control; favored free silver, agrarian reform, the single tax, trust-busting, and populism; only journal of national import to support William Jennings Bryan, 1896; advocated penal reform and opposed capital punishment; interested in psychic phenomena; favored didactic literature and printed considerable criticism; women wrote a quarter of the contents during its first twenty volumes (Mott 4: 401-16). During Harrison’s term, American settlers had upset the royal house of Kamehameha, concluding a treaty of annexation with the U.S. Cleveland, who began his second term in 1893, discovered that the American minister to Hawaii had participated actively in these events and withdrew the treaty from the Senate (Morison 3: 113). Adeline E. Knapp (1860-1909): born Buffalo, New York; editor, Alameda County Express, 1889-1890; reported for San Francisco Call during Hawaiian unrest, “probably the 1st woman ever to represent a great daily newspaper in such a crisis”; when Charlotte Perkins Stetson moved to northern California in 1891, a year after her separation from Charles Walter Stetson, she, her daughter and her ailing mother lived with Knapp; traveled Philippines for six months researching books on Philippine history, published 1901, and hygiene, 1902; editor, Household Magazine, New York, 1902-03; author, The Boy and the Baron, 1902, Well in the Desert, 1908, Iron Pirate, 1911; “writes well and strongly”; instrumental in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association (Who was Who 685; Bennion, Equal 150, 168; Eagle 188; Burt 193; Willard 288, 291). (1837-1892): born Galesburg, Illinois; parents helped found Knox College; graduated at 17 and began teaching; twice elected Knox county superintendent of schools; after nine years, resigned to become president, Illinois W.C.T.U.; became editor-in-chief, Union Signal, chief organ of W.C.T.U. worldwide, with circulation of almost 100,000; president, Illinois Woman’s Press Association; member, Chicago Woman’s Club; director, Protective Agency for Women and Children; traveled to California, Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Japan in temperance work, 1892, dying in Japan (Willard and Livermore 2: 760-61). A leading temperance journal from Chicago; began as Woman’s Temperance Union, edited by Jennie F. Willing, 1874; name later shortened to Our Union, and merged, 1883, with Signal, founded 1880 by Mrs. Matilda B. Carse and edited by Mary B. Willard, sister-in-law of Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard of W.C.T.U. fame; purchased by W.C.T.U., 1910 (Mott 3: 310; T. N. Lewis). Mary Katherine Keemle Field (1838-1896): successful journalist and lyceum lecturer who also aspired to be singer, actress, playwright, and literary critic; born St. Louis; launched thirty-five-year career in journalism by writing travel letters from Italy to Boston Courier, 1859; contributed especially to Springfield Republican and New York Tribune; launched her own weekly, Kate Field’s Washington, 1890-95; her two favorite lyceum lectures concerned Dickens and what she called “Musical Monologue,” incorporating her parody of a London society dinner party and a Spanish song and dance; made stage debut, 1874, acting in minor plays in America and England for several years; publicized commercial and reform causes ranging from telephone, California wines, and glass manufacture to purchase of John Brown’s farm as national shrine, cremation, international copyright, a national music conservatory, spiritualism, and anti-polygamy; founder of Sorosis, first woman’s club; lukewarm advocate of woman’s rights, not endorsing suffrage until 1893 (Baldwin; I. Ross, Ladies 36-37). Published weekly, 1890-95; favored “justice to the Indians, free trade in art objects, the preservation of the Yosemite as a national park, and better manners in Congress”; opposed “prohibition, excessive tariffs, and Grover Cleveland”; typically contained a short story; covered the Columbian Exposition extensively (per Scott Duniway’s comment that Field spent the summer of 1893 in Chicago), and theatre and books decently; contained many observations on American life derived from Field’s travels as a lecturer (Mott 4: 62). Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901): Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837-1901; also became Empress of India, 1876. Herman Henry Kohlsaat (1853-1924): editor; born Albion, Illinois; educated common schools, Galena, Illinois, and Skinner School, Chicago; built large bakery business; part owner, Inter-Ocean, 1891-93; editor and publisher, Chicago Times-Herald, 1894, Evening Post, 1894-1901; editor, Chicago Record-Herald, 1910-12, Inter-Ocean, 1913 (Who was Who 690). Amalgamated with Chicago Record, becoming Record-Herald, 1901 (Who was Who 690). Of pneumonia, on May 19, 1896. The second Woman’s Congress in Portland would occur on April 11-13, 1898. It would be eclipsed by news of the Alaskan gold rush, including an avalanche near Skagway that killed 150, and the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine and the onset of the Spanish-American War (Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; McKern 95-96). Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper (1835-1896): kindergarten educator, author, and Bible teacher; born Cazenovia, New York; wrote book reviews and articles (often on woman’s role in society) for Overland Monthly, San Francisco Examiner, and evangelical press; married Halsey F. Cooper, editor, Chattanooga Advertiser, 1855; two daughters; cousin of Robert G. Ingersoll, “the great agnostic”; tried for heresy by Presbyterians for disavowing doctrines of infant damnation and everlasting punishment, 1881, she left denomination, becoming Congregationalist; instrumental in establishing and administering system of forty kindergartens among San Francisco’s poor, unsupervised, preschool children, 1879-95, which was model for 287 others across U.S. and abroad; first president, International Kindergarten Union, 1892; charter member, Associated Charities of San Francisco; active in Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association, Century Club (San Francisco’s first woman’s club), and General Federation of Women’s Clubs (treasurer, 1894-96); spoke at World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893; one-time opponent of woman suffrage, vice-chair of almost-successful California suffrage campaign, 1896; suffered from depression following husband’s suicide, 1885; died of asphyxia, with daughter Harriet, in their San Francisco apartment, December 11, 1896 (Jacklin; Willard and Livermore 1: 206-07; “Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper“; “Guide to the Sarah Brown Cooper Ingersoll Papers, 1813-1921“). (1856-?): native of Lexington, Missouri; educated in New Orleans at Macé Lefranc Institute; first joined the Picayune, where her father was an editor; married Charles W. Field, San Francisco stock broker, and worked on San Francisco Post; following his death, returned to New Orleans and joined the Times and then, for ten years, the Picayune, until failing health compelled her retirement, c. 1890; “the best known newspaper woman in the South”; pen name “Catherine Cole”; also founded first circulating library in New Orleans (Eagle 776-81; cf. Willard and Livermore 1: 288-89). Where she was employed by Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson (infra, n. 79) as a special correspondent to Washington and elsewhere, both in the U.S. and abroad. George Nicholson (1820-1896): born Leeds, England; immigrated to New Orleans, 1842; began career with Picayune shortly thereafter, as carrier; promoted to business manager shortly before Civil War; during war, argued with Gen. Nathaniel Banks over Federal censorship policies; two daughters and one son with first wife, in England; married Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook, 1878; two sons; member, numerous city exchanges and commercial bodies; member, Krewes of Rex and Proteus; supporter, Louisiana State Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; member, Pickwick Club (“Dictionary of Louisiana Biography“). Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson (1849-1896): first woman publisher of a daily newspaper in Deep South; born Hancock County, Mississippi; as young woman, gained reputation as poetess, writing under pen name “Pearl Rivers”; became literary editor of New Orleans Picayune, c. 1870; married Alva Morris Holbrook, its former editor and owner, forty-one years her senior, 1872; the paper’s new owners failed and it reverted to her husband, who died, 1876, leaving her with $80,000 debt; rather than declaring bankruptcy, she became its active publisher; married business manager George Nicholson, 1878; together they made the paper solvent, tripling circulation; she made it a family paper, adding women’s and children’s departments and, in 1879, a column of society news; president, Women’s National Press Association, 1884; supported civic and reform causes, e.g., Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and public education; though not an advocate of woman suffrage, believed that women should be capable of supporting themselves (Wiegand). Scott Duniway’s brief account is mistaken in three respects: “E. J.” were Eliza’s initials, not George’s; Holbrook was the husband who “died some years ago” and left the papers in arrears–Eliza and George died ten days apart during an influenza epidemic; and they died in February, not the “summer,” of 1896. Apparently, Abigail was not the first to mistake “E. J.” for her husband (“Pearl Rivers“). Miriam Florence Folline Leslie (1836-1914): born New Orleans; rather salacious private life that included multiple marriages and romances; by virtue of her marriage to Ephraim George Squier (1857), who became editor of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1861, was introduced to the flamboyant publishing magnate; editor, Leslie’s Lady’s Magazine, 1863; inaugurated and edited Frank Leslie’s Chimney Corner, a family magazine, 1865; editor, Frank Leslie’s Lady’s Journal, a fashion periodical, 1871; divorced Squier, 1873, and married Leslie, 1874; devoted to lavish social life and frequent trips to Europe; Leslie’s death in 1880 left her with bankrupt business; she reorganized and revitalized it, reigning for fifteen years until leasing it to a syndicate, 1895; would return, 1898, when syndicate failed, temporarily rejuvenating Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly; “The Empress of Journalism” would begin to fail by 1900, and publishing house would cease to exist by 1905; would leave almost $1 million of her estate to Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for “the furtherance of the cause of Woman’s Suffrage” (Stern; Ashley, 1690-1872 299-303). Maria Morgan (1828-1892): known as “Middy”or “Midy”; born Cork, Ireland; expert horsewoman, supervised stables of King Victor Emanuel of Italy, c. 1865-70; came to America, c. 1870, and reported especially livestock news for New York Tribune, Herald, and Times; also contributed to Turf, Field and Farm and Live-Stock Reporter; wrote pedigrees and racing articles for American Agriculturalist; known for series of articles that helped improve treatment of cattle on ocean steamers; one adopted and estranged son; “proud and self-contained” (Willard and Livermore 2: 520-21; cf. I. Ross, Ladies 145-49). Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879): magazine editor; born Newport, New Hampshire; teacher, c. 1806-13; married attorney David Hale, 1813; 5 children; widowed in 1822, compelled by circumstances to open millinery and turned seriously to writing verse and fiction; became editor, Rev. John Lauris Blake’s Ladies’ Magazine, 1828, and moved to Boston; accepted most prevailing beliefs about “women’s sphere” but championed greater educational opportunities such as the female seminary movement and state normal schools for women; became editor, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1837, when Godey bought Ladies’ Magazine, combining it with his Lady’s Book, and moved to Philadelphia, where she continued to warn against militant woman’s rights ideas such as equality with men and suffrage, and tended to avoid controversial topics altogether; gradually came to accept some careers outside the home, including charity, missionary work, and medicine; supported property rights for married women; built Godey’s circulation to a record-breaking 150,000 by 1860; wrote “Mary had a little lamb” and other poems; her agitation responsible for Lincoln’s proclamation of a national Thanksgiving Day, October, 1864; fifty or so books attributed to her; announced retirement in December, 1877, issue, at age 90; died following April (Boyer, “Hale”; Mott 1: 583-84). Supra, n. 17. Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”). Endres, “Woman’s Tribune”; Jerry, “Woman’s Tribune“. This appears doubly wrong. The manuscript originally read “Frances”; perhaps Scott Duniway was confusing this Harper with Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the African-American lecturer, author, and temperance advocate (Filler, “Harper”). “Frances” then was replaced by “Lillie G.” But the Harper who fits this description is Ida A. Husted Harper (1851-1931): born Fairfield, Indiana; educated in Muncie, and one year at Indiana University; high school principal, Peru, Indiana, 1869; married Thomas Winans Harper, 1871, making home in Terra Haute; wrote for Terra Haute Saturday Evening Mail for twelve years; edited “Woman’s Department,” Locomotive Fireman’s Magazine, 1884-93; divorced, 1890; briefly editor-in-chief, Terra Haute Daily News; moved to Indianapolis, May, 1890, and joined editorial staff, Indianapolis News; in charge of press relations, California suffrage amendment campaign, 1896; became Anthony’s biographer, 1897, publishing first two volumes in 1898 and a third in 1908; collaborated on History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, 1902, and wrote vols. 5-6, 1922; chair, press committee, International Council of Women, 1899-1902; in charge of publicity, final N.A.W.S.A. campaign for federal suffrage amendment, 1916-19 (Phillips, “Harper”). Sarah Evelina Austin Higgins (1834-?): officer, Santa Barbara Grange, 1874; Superintendent of Press Work, and president, Santa Barbara County, W.C.T.U. of Southern California, 1888-89; active in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association, 1892; coauthored booklet of verse, Flowers of the Sea, 1895, and historical La Casa de Aguirre of Santa Barbara, 1841-1884, 1896 (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 496; Pacific Rural Press 19 Dec. 1874; Los Angeles Herald 6 Oct. 1888, 11 July 1889, 25 Sept. 1889, 28 Sept. 1892, 2 Nov. 1897). First issued as a daily newspaper in 1884 (“City of Santa Barbara Chronology“). The Courant, the oldest newspaper in continuous publication in the U.S., was started as a weekly paper in 1764 by printer Thomas Green, who sold the newspaper to his assistant, Ebenezer Watson. When Watson died of smallpox in 1777, his widow, Hannah, took over, becoming one of the first women publishers in America (“Older Than the Nation“). Laura Ann Young Pinney (1849-?): active, Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association, and president, 1903-04; authored Within the Golden Gate, 1893, and A Brief History of Thomas Young and His Descendants, 1904;contributor, La copa de oro, 1905; contributor, Woman’s Work, organ of Women’s Foreign Missionary Societies of Presbyterian Church, 1911-22; authoredGenealogy of the Pinney Family in America, 1924 (Los Angeles Herald 7 Dec. 1897, 6 Mar. 1898; San Francisco Call 29 Dec. 1896, 24 Nov. 1903, 14 Mar. 1904, 10 Feb. 1909, 23 May 1911). One of the three most prominent Presbyterian weeklies begun after the Civil War; published 1868-1900 (Mott 3: 74). Emmeline Blanche Woodward Wells (1828-1921): Mormon feminist; born Petersham, Massachusetts; following her mother, converted from Congregationalism to Mormonism, 1842; married James Harvey Harris, 1843, and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, 1844, meeting Joseph Smith before his murder; deserted by her husband, became the second wife of Bishop Newel K. Whitney in ceremony performed by Brigham Young, 1845; took part in Mormon exodus from Nauvoo to Salt Lake Valley, 1846-48; widowed with two daughters, 1850, became seventh wife of Young’s close friend Daniel Hanmer Wells, with whom she had three more daughters; began periodic contributions to Woman’s Exponent, organ of the Relief Society, 1873; associate editor, 1875; editor, 1877-1914; promoted woman suffrage and woman’s rights, first in defense of suffrage first granted by territorial legislature, 1870, in face of Congressional attempts to repeal suffrage as part of effort to ban polygamy (attempts that reached fruition, 1877), and thereafter for restoration (succeeding when Utah achieved statehood, 1896); vice-president for Utah, N.W.S.A., 1874, and regular participant in national conventions, 1879-onward; died of heart failure at 93; eulogized as a “veritable mother in Israel,” flags flew at half-staff for first time for a woman in Utah during her funeral (De Pillis; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 936-56). Founded by 23-year-old Louise Lula Greene as a mission given to her by Brigham Young (Bennion, “Woman’s Exponent”; Bennion, Equal 75-77; T. Peterson). (1850-?): born Paris, Illinois; known as “peculiar,” “self-willed and headstrong” as youth for strong opinions on social and religious questions; educated at Convent of St. Mary, Terre Haute, Indiana; married Charles C. McComas, who later would be state senator, 1871; following financial disaster in 1876 panic, moved to Kansas, 1877, where began writing under pen-name; moved to Los Angeles, 1887, writing under own name; editor, woman’s department, Los Angeles Evening Express, 1887-90; vice president, California Woman Suffrage Association, first vice president, Ladies’ Annex, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, and board of directors, Woman’s Industrial Union, 1891-92; would attend second Oregon Woman’s Congress in Portland, April, 1898, and deliver suffrage address at Willamette Valley Chautauqua that July (Willard and Livermore 2: 483-84; Pacific Empire 5 May 1898; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 484, 488, 494-502, 893). Malinda Elliott Cramer (1844-1907): “New Thought” proponent and founder, Church of Divine Science; born Greensboro, Indiana; daughter of Obediah and Mary Henshaw Elliott; persistent ill health motivated move to San Francisco, 1870, but she remained an invalid; married photographer Charles Lake Cramer, 1872; turning to prayer, she experienced a revelation, 1885, and was healed by 1887, at which time she studied with Emma Curtis Hopkins and began faith-healing; established Harmony, October, 1887; cofounded Home College of Divine Science, 1888, and second college, Oakland, 1893; authored Divine Science and Healing, first published 1890; cofounder, International Divine Science Association, 1892, and president, 1899; congresses in Chicago, San Francisco, Kansas City, and St. Louis, 1893-97, gradually differentiated Divine Science from Christian Science; taught classes at Colorado College of Divine Science, Denver, 1898, and at Charles and Myrtle Fillmore’s “Unity Village,” in Missouri; died possibly of injuries related to San Francisco earthquake (Satter 97-99, 108; Dresser 137, 192-93, 237-38; “Malinda Cramer“; Tyner 317, 319; Woman’s Tribune 19 Oct. 1907; Bennion, Equal 166). Mott describes it as a “theosophical” periodical, published 1888-1906 (4: 286-87). Theosophy, based on the Vedic and Brahman scriptures of India, but also incorporating occult elements from Egypt and elsewhere, had been founded by Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky (Boyer, “Blavatsky”). Although related “metaphysical” movements that posited that the world is primarily spiritual rather than material, and that the mind’s power can change reality, New Thought and Theosophy (and, for that matter, a third, related movement: Spiritualism) were not identical. Tellingly, Satter’s history of New Thought does not mention Theosophy. For a period treatment of their similarities and differences, see Sheldon. Born Council Bluffs, Iowa; daughter of prominent inventor; married Judge Septimus James Hanna (1844-1921), a lawyer who practiced in Iowa, Chicago, and Colorado, 1869; believed she was healed of incurable disease after reading Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, 1886; moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1887, practicing healing; moved to Boston, 1892, where he became editor, and she assistant editor, Christian Science Journal, 1892, and Christian Science Sentinel, 1898; he was first reader in Mother Church, Boston, 1894-1902; earned CSD degree, 1898; later moved to Pasadena, California (Who was Who 516; “A Biographical Sketch of Judge Hanna”). By the Scientist, Scott Duniway probably means the Christian Science Journal, a monthly founded in 1883 (Mott 4: 285). Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910): founder, Church of Christ, Scientist; born Bow, New Hampshire; tormented by various physical and emotional ailments for much of her life, she sought out Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a traveling mesmerist, for treatment, 1862, and came to accept his views that the cause and cure of disease were mental (disease, which was false “belief,” thus had a religious dimension) and that “absent treatment” could be given over long distances by telepathy; later would date the founding of Christian Science to February, 1866, when, following a severe back injury caused by slipping on ice, she defied predictions of death and arose healed “on the third day”; opened Christian Scientists’ Home in Lynn, Massachusetts, and held first Christian Science service, 1875; published Science and Health that fall; became obsessed with Malicious Animal Magnetism, the doctrine that minds could send out destructive telepathic signals; Church of Christ, Scientist, formally chartered, 1879; opened Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, 1882; founded Christian Science Monitor, 1908; died at 89, probably of pneumonia (Ahlstrom; Lord passim). Madge Hilyard Morris Wagner (?-1924): journalist and poet; born on wagon train to California, arriving perhaps in 1850s; had two daughters with first husband, the elder of whom died of consumption, c. 1882; settled in San Jose, reporting and writing features for Mercury; first volume of poetry called Carmel; Debris followed, 1881; Harr Wagner’s publishing company published Poems, 1885; married Wagner, 1887; moved to San Diego, becoming editor of Golden Era, 1891-93, contributing poetry and regular “Youth Department” until its demise; continued writing both poetry and prose as late as 1921, largely of highly sentimental variety; “shy, retiring, and self- effacing”; “Liberty’s Bell,” written for San Jose’s July 4 celebration in 1882, became stimulus for construction of new bell at World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893–traveled to Chicago where she was honored and her daughter read the poem; small and frail, sought health in Colorado, where she wrote well-known “To the Colorado Desert,” extravagantly praised by Joaquin Miller; died San Mateo County (Bennion, Equal 126-30, 171; Eagle 186; Who was Who 1285). First distinctly literary publication on Pacific coast, founded 1852 in San Francisco by J. MacDonough Foard, 21, and Rollin M. Daggett, 19, who “pooled their liking for racy journalism”; it was “strong on racy sketches of mining life and a kind a gay and reckless dramatic criticism”; contributors included Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller; first sold 1860 and subsequently ruined, according to one founder, by “namby-pamby schoolgirl trash”; moved to San Diego by editor Harr Wagner, 1887; ended 1893 (Mott 2: 117, 3: 56, 4: 105-06; Bennion, Equal 120, 127-28). (1838-1923): born Princeton, Kentucky; daughter of Maj. C. B. Henry; married Capt. Charles E. Van Pelt (1844-?), 1864; moved to Nebraska, 1868; came to California, 1889, settling first in Oakland; editor, Pacific Ensign, 1891-97; prominent in Pacific Coast Woman’s Press Association (president, 1895) and California state W.C.T.U. for many years; California Woman’s Congresses, 1894-98; recording secretary, California Suffrage Constitutional Amendment Campaign Association, 1895; first woman to serve on executive board of Christian Churches of California; famed Red Cross worker during Spanish-American War and World War I; helped form Ladies’ Auxiliary, Y.M.C.A., 1904; moved to Los Angeles, c. 1905; inventor, holding patents for locks (“Ada Henry Van Pelt“; “Charles E. Van Pelt“; American Woman’s Magazine Aug. 1895, Oct. 1895; Woman’s Journal 15 June 1895; San Francisco Call 18 Aug. 1896, 3 Aug. 1898, 2 Feb. 1901, 21 May 1904; Bennion, Equal 171; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 482). An eight-page weekly, incorporated November, 1890, that, “with more reliable funding,” succeeded The Pharos (earlier known as The Bulletin), the original publication of the California state W.C.T.U., which had been founded in 1885 by its president, Mary Frank Browne (Bennion, Equal 48; Sacramento Daily Union, 30 Nov. 1890). Anna Rankin Riggs (1835-1908): born Cynthiana, Kentucky; daughter of Richard Montgomery Rankin and Louisa E. Eads Rankin; six brothers, five sisters; moved to farm in Menard County, 1837, then to farm in McLean County, Illinois, near Saybrook; came to Portland with husband Captain H. M. Riggs (?-1903), 1882; president, state W.C.T.U. “and gained more than local fame as a public speaker,” 1882-90; founding editor, White Ribboner, 1891; founded and directed Refuge Home for fallen girls for sixteen years; founded Florence Crittenton home in Portland, superintendent of homes in Idaho and Montana; died Butte, Montana, at 73, of angina pectoris or pneumonia (Pacific Empire 10 Mar. 1898; Morning Oregonian 9 May 1908; Gaston, Portland 3: 548-51; Eagle 813-15; Crawford 4). Mrs. Homer M. Hill: President, Washington Equal Suffrage Association, 1898 (later Mary [May] Arkwright Hutton’s choice in struggle with Emma Smith DeVoe); founder, Woman’s Industrial Club of Seattle (Croly 1143-44, 1149; P. Horner 31; program for forty-first N.A.W.S.A. convention in Seattle, 1909, in folder “Politics and Miscellaneous–Political Groups and Issues-Women,” Mss 1534, OR Hist. Soc.; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 970-71, 976). “Washington Women” began being reprinted, seemingly excerpted, in vol. 5, no. 2 of the Pacific Empire (March 24, 1898), until the end of the latter’s run on July 7. Eva Colwell Brooks Oliver: second wife of Willard N. Oliver, who divorced his first wife in March, 1893, and remarried in June (Sausalito News 31 Mar. 1893; San Francisco Call 12 June 1893). Why she generally is identified as “Mrs. E. R. Oliver” is unknown. An Episcopal weekly from San Francisco, 1866-at least 1934; became a biweekly under new management, 1891; Willard N. Oliver, who had been connected with the Commercial News, became manager, c. 1894; Eva Oliver edited and managed following her husband’s death (on 3 April, 1897), until 1904 (Bennion, Equal 73, 169; Mott 3: 75; San Francisco Call 18 June 1891, 2 Aug. 1891, 18 Sept. 1894; 4 Apr. 1897, 26 May 1901; Los Angeles Herald, 21 May 1897; Sausalito News 3 June 1892). Catharine Amanda Scott Coburn (1839-1913): Abigail’s younger (by five years) sister; she was 13 when the Scott family journeyed overland to Oregon; married John R. Coburn, carpenter, 1857, moving to Canemah; after husband was killed in steamboat explosion, July, 1868, began teaching in Canemah, then Forest Grove, to support four daughters; associate editor, New Northwest, 1874-79; Portland Daily Bee, 1879; Oregonian, 1880-82; editor, Portland Evening Telegram, 1883-88; associate editor, Oregonian, 1888 and a quarter century thereafter; a “kindhearted and extraordinarily gifted woman” who was a “more disciplined writer” than Abigail; equally devoted to woman’s rights, suffrage, and equal pay for equal work, but without Abigail’s notoriety; worked at Portland Baby Home; president, Portland Woman’s Union; long-time Secretary, O.S.E.S.A. (Moynihan, Rebel 81, 96; Turnbull 177-80; H. Spalding; Bennion, Equal 141-42). (c. 1863-?): born California; father born England, mother born Massachusetts; married Charles W. Scherer (c. 1845-?), born Indiana (U.S. Census: 1900: Oregon Series T623, Roll 1351, Page 170, Subpage A; U.S. Census: 1920: Oregon Series T625, Roll 1501, Page 24, Subpage A; not listed in the 1890 Oregon census, they may have arrived relatively recently). In late 1894, the Scherers’ 15-year-old daughter, Gladys, was suspended for leaving school with her mother, but without permission. Eugenie objected that her rights as a parent superceded the school’s rules, and would not let Gladys sign the apology that its principal demanded as a condition of reinstatement. At a school board meeting, at which both sides made their cases, the Scherers were accompanied by their attorney, and by one Abigail Scott Duniway: “Mrs. Duniway believed that the daughter should be reinstated, and that, to avoid any unpleasantness, a slight reprimand should be passed on the mother for her action. She did not believe Gladys should be compelled to make an apology for following the instructions of her mother.” In the end, the Scherers relented, the apology was accepted, and Gladys was reinstated (Morning Oregonian 19 Dec. 1894). (c. 1857-?): born Illinois; daughter of Leonard R. and Sarah Train; family moved to Iowa, c. 1868; worked for father, editor, Fort Dodge Times; secretary and treasurer, Upper Des Moines Editorial Association, 1891-95; active in Webster County Woman Suffrage Association, 1891; elected to Fort Dodge school board, 1893; elected Iowa delegate to N.A.W.S.A. convention, 1893; earned teaching certificate, Multnomah County, 1900; active in Methodist Episcopal Church (U.S. Census: 1870: Iowa Series M593, Roll 394, Page 264, Subpage B; Woman’s Tribune 25 Oct. 1890, 15 Aug. 1891; Woman’s Standard Nov. 1891, Apr. 1893, Dec. 1893; Morning Oregonian 21 Apr. 1900; Sunday Oregonian 3 Apr. 1904; Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette 19 July 1895). Train probably moved to Portland late in 1895 or sometime in 1896; her first letter to the Morning Oregonian, “[i]n behalf of the women of East Portland,” appeared on February 11, 1897–not long before this speech probably was given. Lucy A. Rose Mallory (1846-1920): daughter of Aaron Rose and Minerva Kelley (or Kellogg); mother died at Lucy’s birth; father remarried fifteen months later and family emigrated to Oregon from Michigan, 1851, settling on donation claim that became Roseburg, named after family; married Rufus Mallory (1831-1914), prominent attorney and politician, who arrived in Jacksonville from Iowa, 1859, on June 24, 1860, when 14, in Roseburg, where he had taught school for fifteen months and she had been his pupil; he was state attorney, 1860, 1862-66, in state legislature, 1862, U.S. Congress, 1867-69, Speaker of Oregon House, 1872, U.S. District Attorney for Oregon, 1874-82, twice delegate to Republican National Convention, 1868, 1888, twice president of Republican state conventions; she founded, edited and published (for more than thirty years) “Companion-Papers,” World’s Advance Thought and Universal Republic, advocating universal equality of the sexes, vegetarianism, universal language and money, universal peace, cooperation and love; firm believer in spiritualism, gave psychic readings in rear of Mallory Hotel, where she also published her magazine; moved to San Jose, California, following 1917 death of only son, Elmer E. Mallory; died in San Jose in September (Corning 156; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 541-42; Hines 273-74; Gaston, Portland 2: 5-7; Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon 97-98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 98; Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days,” Oregon Journal 12 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 142-45; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919, 4 Sept. 1920; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 4: 45). The World’s Advance-Thought and the Universal Republic (1876-1918); advocated a host of progressive ideas, including spiritualism, anti-vivisection, vegetarianism, anti-vaccination, universal equality of sexes including equal suffrage, proportional representation, initiative and referendum, Australian ballot, language, money, peace, love, cooperation, and league of nations. Two childhood experiences probably contributed to Rose Mallory’s interest in these causes. First, her stepmother treated her and her older sister, Emily, with “unbelievable cruelty,” threatening to kill their father if they told; perhaps in compensation, she often dreamed of her mother, whose presence “was as real to me as if she had been in the flesh.” Second, her childhood playmate, Solomon, an Umqua Indian boy, “a mystic and a philosopher,” taught her that “the animals and trees and flowers had personalities like people”; “as a child . . . I used to talk to and with the birds and wild flowers” (Fred Lockley, “In the Early Days”, Oregon Journal 11 Jan. 1915; Bennion, Equal 143-45; Mott 3: 82; Morning Oregonian 8 Apr. 1919). Frances E. Gotshall Robinson: founder and publisher of Pacific Empire, one enterprise of family business, Gotshall Printing Co., whose “senior member” was father, John F. Gotshall, and included (brothers?) Jeremiah F. and Lucius E.; longtime member, O.S.E.S.A.; member of Portland W.C.T.U., wrote memorial tribute to Frances Willard in February 24, 1898, issue; founding member, Portland Woman’s Club; active in Oregon Women’s Press Club, serving as treasurer, 1915-17 (Pacific Empire 4 Nov. 1897, 24 Feb. 1898; Portland City Directory, 1897; Writer’s Project; Mss 1511, Box 11, OR Hist. Soc.). Inaugural issue August 16, 1895, with Scott Duniway as editor; last issue July 7, 1898. It merged into the art and literary magazine, Drift, in August and September, which in turn was consolidated with the well-known Pacific Monthly that October, which eventually merged with Sunset magazine of San Francisco after the June, 1911, issue (Powers 720-21). (c. 1875-1904): born St. Paul, Minnesota; daughter of John B. Muller; sister Jessie; moved to Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, as child; after completing education, returned to St. Paul, engaging in newspaper work; Pioneer Press, 1895; associate editor, Spring Valley, Minnesota, Vidette; later worked for Western newspapers for five years, including in Los Angeles, then Salt Lake City; coauthor, History of the Police and Fire Departments of the Twin Cities, 1899; moved to Oklahoma City, February, 1904, where she died of tuberculosis, April 6; completing another book, Lives of Great Men and Women, at death (Pioneer Press 9 Apr. 1904; Upham and Dunlap 532). The preceding two paragraphs fix this address between February and the late fall of 1897. Gotshall launched the Pacific Empire on August 16, 1895, and remained its publisher through February 11, 1897 (vol. 3, no. 20), exactly the “year and a half” to which Scott Duniway refers; the latter issue announces the transfer to Muller and indicates that Scott Duniway will remain as editor. (It also attributes the transfer to “the growing demands of my publishing business consuming so much of my time,” and does not mention health problems. The Woman’s Tribune of February 20, 1897, also reports these events, in the same manner.) By September 2, 1897 (vol. 3, no. 25), however, the paper had changed hands again: Scott Duniway announces her relinquishment of editorial control “to the bright young women who comprise its new management,” Lischen Maud Cogswell Konoff Miller* and Catherine C. Cogswell**, both of Eugene. The sequence of Muller’s journalistic career is unclear. Her acquisition of the Pacific Empire probably occurred late, and may well have been her final newspaper venture (before turning to books and, possibly, returning to St. Paul). But whether Muller had “renounced journalism” or only the Pacific Empire by September, that evidently only four issues of what had been a weekly publication appeared in a space of almost seven months speaks to her longstanding battle with consumption, which would claim her life seven years later. (These issues also did not survive: They are missing from the Oregon Historical Society, University of Oregon, Multnomah County Central Library, and Library of Congress collections.) *Lischen Maud Cogswell Konoff Miller (1858-1915): writer, poet, editor and publisher, the daughter of John Cogswell and Mary Frances Gay Cogswell, pioneers of 1846, was born on a farm between Leaburg and Thurston, on the McKenzie River in Lane county, known as Lizzie Cogswell, and grew up in Coburg. In 1885, she became the wife (her second marriage, the first being to James Konoff) of George Melvin Miller of Eugene and sister-in-law of poet Joaquin Miller and his wife, Theresa Dyer (“Minnie Myrtle”) Miller. Her brother-in-law’s success inspired her to take up writing as a career, and she became “one of the best-know literary women on the Pacific Coast.” She edited the Woman’s Club Journal and contributed to the Oregonian. She stayed with the Pacific Empire through its metamorphosis into Drift and merger with Pacific Monthly, which she founded, edited (1898-1901), and for which she was assistant manager, although arguably not as responsible for the latter’s success as manager William Bittle Wells. Later, she also contributed to Sunset and headed the woman’s department of a Eugene paper until an illness in the spring of 1915. She was active in the Fortnightly Club. Not in full health after the death of her only daughter, Mary, in 1902, and noticeably ill for seven years, she died in September after a four-month struggle (Corning 166; Who’s Who in Oregon 151; Fred Lockley, “Men and Institutions of the Oregon Country,” 11 May 1919, in Scrapbook #76: 181, OR Hist. Soc.; Powers 720-21; Scrapbook #53: 158, OR Hist. Soc.; cf. Pioneer Index, OR Hist. Soc., which records that the Cogswells came to California in 1845 and Oregon in 1853). **Catherine C. Cogswell Thorne (?-1928): born Milwaukee, Wisconsin, daughter of French/Russian mother and English father, attorney; reared by mother, mostly abroad, educated in convents and private tutors; at 17, left a widow with two small sons, both of whom died tragically at 7 and 9; became actress following their deaths, leading lady for Frohman for many years and playing in many European countries; came to Eugene, 1894; married J. Frederick Thorne, writer/engineer, editor, Pacific Ports of Seattle; went to Porcupine, Alaska, during gold rush, 1911, and assisted him in editing Porcupine Bulletin; died in Eugene; buried in Mary Gay Cogswell Cemetery (Morning Oregonian 28 Nov. 1928; Powers 721; Mitchell). Gotshall would return as a third editor in vol. 4, no. 25 (March 3, 1898) until the end of the publication’s run. Following the September, 1897, transfer to Miller and Cogswell, Scott Duniway briefly contributed a column called “Mrs. Duniway’s Headquarters” but, undoubtedly, was sorely disappointed with a marked change in editorial direction. Powers comments: “This had been a woman’s suffrage paper. ‘The Pacific Empire, however, was at no time after passing under Mrs. Miller’s control, the organ of the suffragists. . .’” (720). Abigail’s final column appeared on December 30, 1897, together with the final chapter of her serialized novel, “The Old and the New,” although she contributed a sort of letter to the editor in the “Open Court” column in the following issue (6 Jan. 1898). Alice Chenoweth Smart Day (1853-1925): born Winchester, Virginia; father abandoned Episcopalianism to become Methodist circuit rider in Indiana; graduated Cincinnati, Ohio, Normal School, 1873; married Charles Selden Smart, 1875; moved to New York City, c. 1880, and became friends with famed agnostic Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, publishing freethinking Men, Women and Gods, and Other Lectures, 1885, under pseudonym “Helen Hamilton Gardener”; well-known “Sex in Brain,” 1888, refuted theories of former Surgeon General Dr. William A. Hammond that brain size proved women’s inferiority; contributed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible, 1895; famous novel, Is This Your Son, My Lord?, 1890, targeted double standard in campaign to legalize prostitution and in shockingly low age of consent laws; contributor of articles on social ills to Harper’s, Popular Science Monthly, Belford’s Magazine, Free Thought Magazine, Arena (where she was briefly co-editor, 1897); following Smart’s death, 1901, remarried to Col. Selden Allen Day, 1902; at urging of Anna Howard Shaw and others, joined campaign for federal suffrage amendment; following N.A.W.S.A. defections to Alice Paul’s militant Congressional Union, appointed to reorganized Congressional Committee, 1913; vice-chair, 1919; N.A.W.S.A. vice-president, 1917, she was its chief lobbyist with Wilson administration, wielding crucial behind-the-scenes influence that came to fruition with ratification, 1920; appointed to U.S. Civil Service Commission, 1920; died of chronic myocarditis (Washburn). Elizabeth Rose Donnelly Isgrigg (1861-1927): born Indianapolis; married Daniel Lynn Isgrigg (1856-1932), train dispatcher, member, Dunsmuir Improvement Club and school trustee, c. 1883; delegate from Siskiyou County to first Northern Californian Teachers’ Association convention, 1897; opposed compulsory vaccinations in Berkeley schools; member, Dunsmuir Progressive Euchre Club; died Los Angeles; daughters Anna Corinne (1885-1903), Jean Malese (1890-1966), and Esther Elizabeth (1887-1962), and son Francis Lynn (1884-1969) (“Family Group Record“; “Elizabeth Rose Donnelly“; “Siskiyou County Great Register 1894“; Bennion, Equal 168; Dunsmuir Herald 2 July 1897, 9 July 1897; San Francisco Call 24 Aug. 1897, 10 Sept. 1904; New York Times 12 Jan. 1913). A weekly, first published in July, 1896, a printer named Savage may have had a hand in its launch; early on, it was edited by Henry Malcolm Calkins; it folded in 1899 (Bennion, Equal 168; Dunsmuir News 25 July 1896). One year after its debut, on July 16, 1897 (vol. 2, no. 2), the Herald carried this odd notice: “Hereafter no one but the undersigned is authorized to transact any business for this paper. H. M. CALKINS”. This notice was repeated for two months. Then, on September 24 (vol. 2, no. 11), a new notice appeared: “With this week’s issue, I assume full charge of the HERALD, Henry M. Calkins [sic] relations with the paper have been severed and hereafter the business will be conducted in my name. ELIZABETH ISGRIGG”. A second notice informed readers: “The Former [sic] editor of this paper left taking the subscristion [sic] book with him and last week the mail was made up under difficulties. Any subscriber not receiving their paper please notify us and thereby confer a favor.” Together, these suggest that Elizabeth already was associated with the paper, and that there was a struggle for control, the details of which are unknown. While Calkins had been “Editor, Publisher, and Lessee,” Elizabeth was “Editor and Proprietor.” So it is possible that the Isgriggs owned the paper, even from the beginning, and found cause to terminate Calkins’ lease. Further, if oblique, evidence for this scenario is provided by the rival Dunsmuir News. The senior paper in town (founded c. 1890 by G. D. Cummings), the News was contemptuous of the upstart Herald and, as rule, studiously ignored it. But there were exceptions. Commenting on the Herald’s launch, the News editorialized: “The sheet was started for spite and is encouraged by knaves” (25 July 1896). Elsewhere in the same issue, and more to the point, an attack on its publication of a legal notice regarding a school bond issue identifies Elizabeth’s husband, Daniel, as the Herald’s publisher. Two months later, alluding to Elizabeth’s prominence, the News spat: “It down the street says that its henpecked sheet is a newspaper. No one else ever considered it a newspaper” (5 Sept. 1896). Another year later, noting Calkins’ demise, it commented simply: “We see that sister Isgrigg is back running her old sheet” (25 Sept. 1897). In any event, Elizabeth officially published only five issues: Beginning on October 29 (vol. 2, no. 17), Daniel is identified editor and proprietor. If Scott Duniway is referring only to Elizabeth’s official tenure, then the date of this speech is fixed more precisely (cf. supra, n. 118) as late September or October, 1897. (1814-1901): phrenologist, publisher; born Cohocton, New York; took up phrenology, study of physiological, especially cranial, determinants of character and its modification, in 1830s; brothers Orson Squire and Lorenzo Niles Fowler were first and most important popularizers of “practical phrenology” for treatment of insanity, education, personal adjustment, marriage, and sex; she joined their permanent center in New York City, 1837, remaining in family business for more than sixty years, including publishing activities; married Dr. Samuel Robert Wells, vegetarian and hydrotherapist, 1844; they obtained her brothers’ interests in business, 1855, helped found American Institute of Phrenology, and were “the mainstays of phrenology in America”; she carried on as sole proprietor and later president of firm following Wells’ death, 1875; still writing articles for Phrenological Journal and lecturing at Institute in her eighties; proponent of equal rights, assisted New York Medical College for Women; early believer in spiritualism, medium for New York Circle in 1850s (Isaacs). Established by Nathan Allen, a young medical student, in Philadelphia, 1838; sold to Fowler brothers of New York, 1841; joined in 1852 by Wells, their colleague in publishing the Water-Cure Journal; publication ceased, 1911; “phrenology” meaning craniology, the journal specialized in “analyses of the mental characteristics of famous persons, illustrating its articles by portraits”; it absorbed Life Illustrated, another Fowler and Wells publication begun in 1854, in 1861, and American Kindergarten Magazine of New York in 1887 (Mott 1: 447-48, 2: 42, 3: 163). Scott Duniway may have met Fowler Wells during a ten-month trip east in 1876, to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. While in New York she searched for a publisher for her recently completed epic poem, David and Anna Matson. The publisher she found was the Wells’ company; that December she was the subject of a profile in “the Phrenological”; and she contracted for a serial entitled “Why Mar the Image,” to begin in January, 1877. Abigail’s profile, eerily accurate, noted that: her brain measured 22 1/4 inches; her weight, 160 pounds, gave “ample” support, enabling the brain to work “long and hard without exhaustion”; her temperament revealed “zeal, enthusiasm, and earnestness in work,” and “the power to think, gather knowledge, to know its meaning and its use”; the breadth of her head, side to side, showed “executiveness and courage”; she “does not let up, or excuse, or palliate the truth”; she has “large Constructiveness,” so that complicated matters seem clear to her; she possesses “much poetic fancy and aesthetic taste”; she “would prefer to win people to be good rather than to scare or frighten them to right ways”; she has “strong Spirituality,” yearning for “something higher and better than this mere worldly state”; and her “large Language makes her a good talker” (“Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway”; Moynihan, Rebel 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex“). Sara A. Francis Underwood: wife (married 1862) of Benjamin Franklin Underwood (1839-1914), for thirty years a lecturer widely known especially for espousing liberal religious thought, co-editor of Boston Index (organ of Free Religious Association), 1880-86, editor of Philosophic Journal (organ of Psychical Science Congress), 1893-95, and chair, Congress of Evolutionists (Who was Who 1263).
OREGON STATE EQUAL SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – December 10, 1896
The twenty-fifth annual meeting of O.S.E.S.A.1 convened at the Unitarian church in Portland on this rainy Thursday afternoon. In her capacity as the organization’s President, Scott Duniway delivered the following annual address, recounting the progress of the suffrage movement not only in Oregon, but nationwide. Her tone is optimistic; asserting gains in public opinion, she […]
The twenty-fifth annual meeting of O.S.E.S.A.1 convened at the Unitarian church in Portland on this rainy Thursday afternoon. In her capacity as the organization’s President, Scott Duniway delivered the following annual address, recounting the progress of the suffrage movement not only in Oregon, but nationwide. Her tone is optimistic; asserting gains in public opinion, she expresses confidence in the future, while her attacks on prohibitionists are comparatively muted. She does argue that only ten percent of suffragists actually believe prohibition to be a temperance measure, and repeats the charge (also made in her address before the Idaho Constitutional Convention) that it was the woman’s rights alliance with prohibition that caused Washington voters to disenfranchise women in 1887. In addition, the recent defeat of a suffrage referendum in California provides her with compelling evidence of the danger of a suffrage-prohibition alliance. Scott Duniway also voices her own unique perspective on national issues of the day, in particular the financial crises that spawned the calls for “free silver” and an end to the gold standard, and culminated in the famous, and just-concluded, Presidential contest pitting the “Great Commoner,” Democrat William Jennings Bryan (also endorsed by the Populist, Silver Republican, and National Silver Parties), against Republican William McKinley. Near the end of her speech, Scott Duniway rejects both mono- and bi-metallism; in an interesting and atypical argument from expediency, she claims that women are better economists than men and, once freed, will cure the cause of the panic by raising the funds to pay the national debt. The text is taken from the December 10, 1896, issue of the Pacific Empire.2 With the return of the usual anniversary season for most of the State Equal Suffrage Organizations that hold themselves auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Oregon wheels into line with a better equipped service, more courage and a more thoroughly united force of co-workers than at any time previous since our eventful repulse in the constitutional amendment campaign of 1884. While our work of organizing the state by precincts has not yet been commenced, the county work has progressed as rapidly during the year as the excitement attendant upon a complex campaign in national politics has permitted. Many of our strongest allies, because of the fact that they are strong women, became so imbued with what seemed to them the vital emergency of the times that it was deemed advisable for the state organization to hold itself strictly aloof from all partisan issues, that we might be the better prepared to present a unified front to the public after the storm should have subsided. While, with all our care, it was not possible to prevent some bitterness, especially with those partisans who found the issues for which they contended had been left behind on election day, and the consequent, and we hope temporary, disgruntlement of some of the best and most valued friends of the equal suffrage cause, the president believes that after all, much general good has been accomplished by partisanship of women, since, through it women have become open and avowed equal suffragists who, but for the political current with which they have been moving, would still be hugging the threadbare delusion that “they do not want to vote”–a phantasy that always provokes derision among men who see through the folly of their position and the thin veneer of the ridiculous assertions which their example denies. And yet, such is the perverse mental obliquity of the average voter of today, that we are sometimes compelled to doubt the wisdom of even this very catchy method of opening the eyes of the adversary, since every party that is beaten at any election in which women have taken part, is prone to use the fact that many women would have voted against its theories if allowed to vote, as a pretext for withholding the ballot from women altogether.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_3_62" id="identifier_3_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Six weeks after Abigail’s comments, at its January, 1897, convention in Des Moines, the intense political events of 1896 also would prompt the national association to debate the wisdom of nonpartisanship (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 280-82).">3 But it is worthy of note, also, that of the many prominent men of all parties who took sides in the late political contest, almost every one, and certainly all the wiser and more respected leaders, were open and avowed advocates of our cause, a spectacle we have never before witnessed since the leaders of opposing partisan factions, imagining they were fighting prohibition, made common cause against our enfranchisement in Washington in 1886 and 1887, and wrested the ballot from one half of her people. A healthy and hopeful growth of public sentiment in favor of our proposed constitutional amendment, to enfranchise women, is reported from the counties of Baker, Benton, Clatsop, Clackamas, Coos, Crook, Douglas, Grant, Gilliam, Jackson, Josephine, Lane, Linn, Lincoln, Lake, Multnomah, Marion, Polk, Sherman, Umatilla, Union, Wasco, Washington, Wallowa and Yamhill, each of which contains a number of the association’s prominent co-workers who are only waiting for the anticipated favorable vote of the incoming legislature, ratifying the action of its immediate predecessor, to give them a specific rallying point. The time for concerted, organized action in agitating our right to a voice in the government which we are taxed to maintain, and to whose laws we are held amenable, has become, by common consent, a period wherein a constitutional amendment has passed, or is in progress of passing through a state legislature. An amendment once legally submitted to the voters for final action, is properly placed before the public for discussion, adoption or rejection. Just as a question must be moved by one member, and seconded by another before it is properly placed before a parliamentary body for final action, an amendment to our state constitution must be moved, or “proposed” by one legislative assembly and seconded by the next one before it reaches the voters for their consideration, adoption or rejection. The very large vote given by our last legislative assembly on the proposition to so amend the state constitution that the women of Oregon may, in common with those of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah, enjoy the full equality of rights before the law which it is the avowed, though long deferred purpose of the government of these United States to establish, inspires the women of this state with the belief and hope that the incoming legislature will be glad to ratify the just and chivalrous act of its immediate predecessor.4 The most notable and distinctive work we have to chronicle for Oregon during the past year has been The Woman’s Congress, which last June held three sessions daily for three consecutive days in Portland, and the Chautauqua assemblies of the Willamette and Rogue river valleys, which meet annually in July. Although these associations were not convened in the interest of any particular idea of propaganda, it was noticeable that the equal suffrage movement received much more favorable consideration than any other single issue that came up for discussion at any session. To Mrs. Mary Schaffer Ward, the very able and untiring recording secretary of the equal suffrage association, was delegated the responsible position of keeper, this year, of the suffrage headquarters at Gladstone Park, the headquarters for the Willamette Valley Chautauqua Assembly, where we had a commodious tent, held numerous receptions and secured the signatures of many hundreds of friends who are ready to co-operate with us as occasion may grant them opportunity. No one knows better than the president that, but for the untiring faithfulness and business ability of the society’s Executive Board and its various committees, it would have been impossible to accomplish the work of the year. Each of these earnest women, no matter in what department her efforts extended, merits the sincere regard of every patriot. But to Frances E. Gotshall<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_5_62" id="identifier_5_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances E. Gotshall Robinson: founder and publisher of Pacific Empire, one enterprise of family business, Gotshall Printing Co., whose “senior member” was father, John F. Gotshall, and included (brothers?) Jeremiah F. and Lucius E.; longtime member, O.S.E.S.A.; member of Portland W.C.T.U., wrote memorial tribute to Frances Willard in February 24, 1898, issue; founding member, Portland Woman’s Club; active in Oregon Women’s Press Club, serving as treasurer, 1915-17 (Pacific Empire 4 Nov. 1897, 24 Feb. 1898; Portland City Directory, 1897; Writer’s Project; Mss 1511, Box 11, OR Hist. Soc.).">5, publisher of the Pacific Empire, the association is especially indebted for her untiring devotion to the cause. It is the duty of every friend of the cause to assist her in carrying her financial burdens, to sustain the paper, and it is hoped that at this anniversary some action will be taken in this direction. The engagement of Susan B. Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_6_62" id="identifier_6_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">6 at The Woman’s Congress, and of Rev. Anna Shaw<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_7_62" id="identifier_7_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A.; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexnor, “Shaw”; Linkugel).">7 at the Willamette Valley Chautauqua, together with social efforts to do honor to these distinguished visitors by all organized bodies of women, was as significant as it was encouraging.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_8_62" id="identifier_8_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Sponsored by O.S.E.S.A. and held at the Taylor Street Church in Portland, the first Woman’s Congress brought together women’s and some men’s organizations throughout the state. In 1896, Anthony, then president of N.A.W.S.A., Shaw, its vice-president at large, and Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper, leading California suffragist, attended. Shaw stayed after the three-day event in the first week of June to speak at the Willamette Valley Chautauqua, in Oregon City, on “Anna Shaw Day” in July (McKern 95-96; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 892-93). The December 11 Morning Oregonian reported that Anthony and Ingersoll Cooper also were “visiting celebrities” at this O.S.E.S.A. convention. The following day, however, it reported on resolutions offered in the wake of the latter’s “sudden” death, which occurred in San Francisco on the very night of this speech.">8 The attitude of the respectable press has been uniformly considerate and kind. Full and complete notices have been accorded to everything of public importance connected with our work, for all of which we are duly grateful. The pulpit has been another and a powerful factor in the dissemination of our principles. The Pastors of almost all of our popular churches, aided by many of their most substantial supporters, have lent us their valuable assistance whenever invited, and some have kindly volunteered to assist us in emergencies. The most distinguished members of the Bench and Bar are also, in the main quite friendly to our movement. Their arguments in favor of our cause are legal, scholarly, logical and unanswerable. It is noticeable, also, that the desire of our popular judges of all degrees has been to allow woman the fullest leniency of the laws within the pale of their power. And, while it is possible that a jurist may err sometimes in his decisions, because of the manifest inequalities of the laws toward women who are taxed without representation and governed without consent, yet it is, under the circumstances, a satisfaction to note that if errors are committed they are, far more frequently than in former years, made upon the side of mercy. While in a strictly just government, no favoritism toward sex could be tolerated, it is manifestly impossible for the best men to hold a defenseless class to the same strict rulings to which they hold the makers of the laws. In coming years, when women are also among the law makers of the land, courts will have no pretexts for favoritism in any case on account of sex, because both the sexes will be equally represented by its own gender. Outside of Oregon our cause has made great progress in many parts of the Union. In the state of Washington, where the women voters were disenfranchised in 1887, by a political coup d’ etat, of which its abettors of all parties will yet confess themselves ashamed, we have the assurance from what we believe to be well qualified sources of information, that the supreme court could not during the year, have done otherwise than reverse the infamous decision under which Chief Justice Jones<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_9_62" id="identifier_9_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="R. A. Jones (c. 1830-1888): Chief Justice, Washington Territory; died from complications of lung and kidney ailments; buried Rochester, Minnesota (“Death Records for King County Washington“; Bancroft, “History of Washington” 300).">9 legalized the robbery of the women’s ballots if their case had not been indefinitely postponed through the oversight of an attorney who permitted some sort of a technicality, that might have been prevented, to intervene and stay the wheels of progress for a season. We have the cheering news from Idaho that she has become the fourth star in our galaxy of free states, her voters having given her this power by a more than two-thirds majority of all the votes cast on the constitutional amendment, which was submitted for their decision on November 3rd, by the legislative assembly of 1884.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_10_62" id="identifier_10_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="This was the campaign from which “the National” had Scott Duniway removed, and for which success she was to feel denied proper credit. It also represented the first test for Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), who a year earlier had been appointed chair of the new Organization Committee of N.A.W.S.A., and her innovative strategy of agitating for suffrage on an electoral precinct-by-precinct basis (Flexnor, Century 222). Thus, when Scott Duniway comments (in par. two) that precinct efforts in Oregon have not commenced but county-wide efforts have proven as successful as could be expected under the circumstances, one detects a somewhat grudging acknowledgment of Chapman Catt’s achievement and a need to explain herself.">10 But the question being raised as to whether the two-thirds majority vote given on the amendment itself shall be declared the legal one, instead of the majority vote on some wholly irrelevant question, prompt measures have been taken by the friends of equal suffrage to secure the earliest possible decision of the supreme court, to allay all uncertainty and avoid the risk of invalidating future elections by tyrannical, absurd and senseless litigation. We have also to record a repulse, but not a defeat, in California, where a vote on a constitutional amendment to enfranchise women was cast on the same day as that of Idaho, but with a different result. Although the majority of the vote cast in favor of granting the elective franchise to women on November 3rd, as nearly as can be known to date, in absence of the official count, was, outside of San Francisco, and Oakland, about 13,000, this vote was overcome in the cities named by an adverse majority vote of 21,000, thus causing the amendment to be defeated by a majority of about 8,000. Never before, except perhaps in New York in 1884, had the handicapped women of any state gone into their battle for ballots with what seemed so favorable a prospect for success. Their campaign of education had been non-partisan, vigorous, universal, dignified, masterly. Money was raised, almost without stint or limit, to pay the heavy salaries of Eastern leaders, who devoted eight months of painstaking, intelligent, systematic work to the dissemination of the fundamental principles of a republican form of government. The heaviest women taxpayers of the state became its avowed allies, and in many instances its leading officers. Religion, brilliancy, beauty, wealth, domesticity, intelligence, morality and fashion were its united devotees. The unanimous opinion of the public, up to ten days preceding the election, was that victory certainly awaited the women, though they could only watch the battle of ballots from afar while it was being waged for or against their liberties by a privileged class. The sequel proved that women, through their campaign of education, notwithstanding it had been wholly nonpartisan, had aroused the same old ambushed enemy that had gathered adherents from all parties and overthrown the women’s votes in the state of Washington. The Liquor League and its allies, masquerading as a “Business Men’s Protective Association,” issued, as is alleged, a secret circular, on or about October 24th, a copy of which is now in my possession, commanding all men connected in any way with the liquor interests to vote solidly against “amendment No. 6.” And while these negative votes, amounting to about 18,000 in the aggregate, were not enough, of themselves, to offset the very large affirmative majority secured elsewhere in the state, the fact must not be overlooked that nearly 80,000 other men voted against the amendment. Although these voters are, in my judgment, the victims of a wholly groundless alarm, the fact remains that they are aroused, and determined to prevent what they conceive to be the unwarrantable interference of women with their personal prerogatives.11 We have seen, in the result of the recent great national election, how many men in their might, and women in their manacles, will arise above all partisan considerations to protect what they believe to be the immediate interests of their own pockets. Whether all these people were mistaken or not in their apprehensions is not germane to this contention. That their votes carried the day is cited to illustrate by point. California is a wine-producing, beer-brewing state. A very large proportion of her productive acreage is employed in growing grapes, hops, barley and rye, all of which depend in the main upon the liquor traffic for a market. To this must be added the barrel and bottling interests of a large class of voters; and to further cite the power of this many-sided traffic, I will mention that, unloading on a dock, at the time of my last visit to San Francisco, were 11 tons of hoop iron, to be used by a local brewer in the manufacture of beer kegs. When to all this is added the immense income from the rentals of real estate engaged in the traffic, we can form some idea of the power arrayed against us. A widely spread error overran California to the effect that Woman Suffragists were masquerading in the real interest of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. While it is true that all good women believe in temperance in everything, and that Equal Suffrage, being non-partisan, repels no allies, whether they be prohibitionists or liquor dealers and drinkers, it is equally true that of the nearly 200,000 enrolled Equal Suffragists, only about 10 per cent look upon prohibition as a temperance measure, and the remaining 90 per cent are divided, numerically, according to their respective localities, between the republican, democratic and populist parties. I have, personally, long been aware that equal suffragists must everywhere proclaim that they look higher than whisky barrels for their inspiration or go down disenfranchised to their tombs. I would not myself, if a voter, with my present understanding, cast my ballot for monometalism or the gold standard, for free trade, for the free and unlimited coinage of silver at a fixed ratio, or for prohibition of the liquor traffic–much as I detest the abominations of drunkenness, of which the saloon is only the outward sign.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_12_62" id="identifier_12_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The 1896 election represented a milestone in the conflict between agrarian and industrial interests. Bryan campaigned for free silver (delivering his famous “Cross of Gold” oration), lower tariffs, an income tax, trust-busting, and other progressive measures, but was defeated. Scott Duniway argued against both the “gold bug” of the East and the “silver elephant” of the West as “fictions,” and instead supported a uniform national paper currency on the grounds that money–of any kind–is as stable as the government that issues it. For more on her economic opinions, see “The Destiny of Our Republic” n. 4. Her monetary theories were a “disgrace” within the family, and brother Harvey and her sons campaigned enthusiastically for McKinley and the gold standard (Moynihan, Rebel 166-67). Given his own views on the subject, it is interesting that, of the two paragraphs of his sister’s speech that appeared in Harvey’s Oregonian, one was the final paragraph, in which Abigail voices her scandalous opinion. Although out of step with her relatives and the national Republican party, on this subject Scott Duniway was more in step with many Republicans in Oregon. The state Republican convention of 1890 actually had adopted a free silver platform and, in subsequent years, straddled the fence. In 1896, the national party platform explicitly opposed free silver, but the state party voted down a resolution opposing it. Instead, it endorsed the more ambiguous national party platform of 1892, calling for parity of values between gold and silver and demanding that “every dollar, paper or coin, issued by the Government, shall be as good as any other.” Silver Republicans saw this compromise as vindication, while gold advocates, including Harvey W. Scott, saw it as subterfuge (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 309-10). McKinley carried Oregon, due in no small measure to Harvey’s weighty support (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 51-53).">12 But, were I an adherent of any or either of these political creeds, such a fact would not be germane to this movement, which is organized to sustain the right of every person, in the words of Benjamin Harrison<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_13_62" id="identifier_13_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1833-1901): twenty-third President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland.">13, to “cast one ballot and have that ballot honestly counted.” Because of the fallacy existing in the public mind, to the detriment and overthrow of Equal Suffrage in every state where the opponents of prohibition have become alarmed at the prospect of our success, it becomes necessary to say in this connection that two principles more diametrically opposed to each other than Equal Suffrage, which means liberty, and Prohibition, which means the exercise of force, were never yet associated together by the human mind. But, when the powerful, balloted and financially-ballasted hosts of the Liquor League, with its various allies, masses its forces in ambush to strike down Equal Suffrage, which has never made war on it or its methods; and this power, through the agency of its ballots, bombards our Fort Sumters and trails our banners of liberty in the dust, it is quite time that we remind it that it must cease to interfere with our liberties or take the consequences. History is always repeating itself. Women are not much longer to be held in bondage to the apron strings of foreign born bar tenders; nor are all the hosts of free men, in California or elsewhere, who have cast, or are yet to cast their votes for the political equality of the home-makers and morality-conservators of these United States to be silenced by the menacing power of the whisky barrel, the beer keg, the decanter and the demijohn. When the leaders of the slave-holders’ rebellion startled the world by firing on Fort Sumter they did not strike at abolitionists, but at a government that upheld slavery. But the recoil of their guns stirred up a latent power that created an uncontrollable host of abolitionists to put down their pet, peculiar institution, chief among the host being President Lincoln, himself. The women of this nation, whose loyal fathers, husbands and sons have been defeated in California and elsewhere by the Liquor League and its devotees, have met their Ball’s Bluff<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_14_62" id="identifier_14_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A small, militarily inconsequential battle fought on October 21, 1861, on the Potomac near Leesburg, Virginia; bungling in the chain of command produced disastrous Union casualties and a Congressional inquest (Thomas L. Breiner, “The Battle of Ball’s Bluff“).">14 disaster and their Bull Run15 defeat. But our enemy must yet evacuate our Richmond or meet the fate of Jefferson Davis16, for whose high crime of treason against the cause of freedom and justice to all the people he received the punishment of disenfranchisement, which, after all, only relegated him to the political equality of the loyal American womanhood, which had furnished the soldiers to put down his rebellion. Why it is that the patriotic and chivalrous manhood of this Nation has not long ago arisen in its might to resent this ignominious abridgment of woman’s liberties can only be accounted for by the fact, so well expressed in their own Declaration of Independence, “That mankind are more ready to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right the wrongs to which they have become accustomed.” Your president recommends, as a means of awakening and sustaining a social, useful and universal interest in the equal suffrage cause for the coming year, the foundation everywhere of Political Study Clubs, auxiliary to the State Equal Suffrage Association.17 Respecting the vast array of text books provided for leading the student of political science along the partisan lines drawn by opposing political parties, I find upon close examination, that the four years’ course of scientific political study, edited by Carrie Chapman Catt<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_18_62" id="identifier_18_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-04, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63).">18, head organizer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, is absolutely non-partisan, thoroughly reliable, in a historic as well as a present day sense, and therefore eminently applicable to the needs of all women who are patriotic enough to desire their own enfranchisement. The late political campaign was the means of a thorough awakening of all classes along financial lines. But the root of financial evils has not yet been removed, or we would nowhere have idle luxury, distressing poverty, or present or prospective panics. When any aggregation of men have, at any time overstepped the bounds of their resources in the promotion of great public enterprises they have gladly welcomed woman’s aid to relieve them of financial stress. There are Mary A. Livermores<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_19_62" id="identifier_19_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).">19, Florence Nightingales<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_20_62" id="identifier_20_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Florence Nightingale (1820-1910): English hospital reformer; nurse during Crimean War; formed institution for training of nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital; developed “polar-area diagram,” similar to pie chart, showing that improved sanitation decreases hospital mortality rates; developed Model Hospital Statistical Form; Royal Statistical Society, 1858; honorary member, American Statistical Association, 1874; worked for army sanitary reform, improvement of nursing, and public health in India (Cynthia Audain, “Florence Nightingale”).">20 and Clara Bartons<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-equal-suffrage-association-december-10-1896/#footnote_21_62" id="identifier_21_62" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Barton (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for 23 years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).">21 in every community, of whom the world has not heard. But their monetary genius is seen everywhere in lifting church debts, erecting school houses, building sidewalks, and directing the numerous philanthropies for which in every village, town, city and precinct there are calls. When men have called women as equals to their aid in the affairs of government, as they should long ago have done, I predict that one of free womanhood’s first endeavors will materialize as a National Fair, with organizations in every state and county, and auxiliaries in every precinct, in which simultaneous festivals will be held to raise the means, in woman’s own inimitable way, for liquidating the national debt. Already many women are talking up this idea; but we are resolved to work for its accomplishment as free women only, and not as the political peers of a dead Jefferson Davis, an imported Chinaman, or an Indian not taxed. NOTES The Association’s name had been changed–Equal replacing Woman–at its October, 1894, convention, in Portland (Montague 50). The Morning Oregonian also covered the convention on December 11 and 12, reprinting two brief excerpts (paragraphs 28 and 32) from Scott Duniway’s address. Six weeks after Abigail’s comments, at its January, 1897, convention in Des Moines, the intense political events of 1896 also would prompt the national association to debate the wisdom of nonpartisanship (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 280-82). In January, 1895, the Oregon legislature–as it had first done in 1880–approved a bill for the submission of a women suffrage amendment to the voters. Frances E. Gotshall Robinson: founder and publisher of Pacific Empire, one enterprise of family business, Gotshall Printing Co., whose “senior member” was father, John F. Gotshall, and included (brothers?) Jeremiah F. and Lucius E.; longtime member, O.S.E.S.A.; member of Portland W.C.T.U., wrote memorial tribute to Frances Willard in February 24, 1898, issue; founding member, Portland Woman’s Club; active in Oregon Women’s Press Club, serving as treasurer, 1915-17 (Pacific Empire 4 Nov. 1897, 24 Feb. 1898; Portland City Directory, 1897; Writer’s Project; Mss 1511, Box 11, OR Hist. Soc.). Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-50; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919): Methodist minister, physician, temperance and woman’s rights lecturer; degrees in theology, 1878, and medicine, 1885, Boston University; Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, 1885; superintendent, national W.C.T.U. franchise department, 1888-92; vice-president, 1892-1904, and president, 1904-15, N.A.W.S.A.; first woman to receive Distinguished Service Medal, for her international efforts for world peace; published autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer, 1915; memorialized in National Women’s Hall of Fame, 2000 (Flexnor, “Shaw”; Linkugel). Sponsored by O.S.E.S.A. and held at the Taylor Street Church in Portland, the first Woman’s Congress brought together women’s and some men’s organizations throughout the state. In 1896, Anthony, then president of N.A.W.S.A., Shaw, its vice-president at large, and Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper, leading California suffragist, attended. Shaw stayed after the three-day event in the first week of June to speak at the Willamette Valley Chautauqua, in Oregon City, on “Anna Shaw Day” in July (McKern 95-96; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 892-93). The December 11 Morning Oregonian reported that Anthony and Ingersoll Cooper also were “visiting celebrities” at this O.S.E.S.A. convention. The following day, however, it reported on resolutions offered in the wake of the latter’s “sudden” death, which occurred in San Francisco on the very night of this speech. R. A. Jones (c. 1830-1888): Chief Justice, Washington Territory; died from complications of lung and kidney ailments; buried Rochester, Minnesota (“Death Records for King County Washington“; Bancroft, “History of Washington” 300). This was the campaign from which “the National” had Scott Duniway removed, and for which success she was to feel denied proper credit. It also represented the first test for Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947), who a year earlier had been appointed chair of the new Organization Committee of N.A.W.S.A., and her innovative strategy of agitating for suffrage on an electoral precinct-by-precinct basis (Flexnor, Century 222). Thus, when Scott Duniway comments (in par. two) that precinct efforts in Oregon have not commenced but county-wide efforts have proven as successful as could be expected under the circumstances, one detects a somewhat grudging acknowledgment of Chapman Catt’s achievement and a need to explain herself. Cf. Flexnor, Century 223-25, which agrees in substance, although differs in vote totals. The 1896 election represented a milestone in the conflict between agrarian and industrial interests. Bryan campaigned for free silver (delivering his famous “Cross of Gold” oration), lower tariffs, an income tax, trust-busting, and other progressive measures, but was defeated. Scott Duniway argued against both the “gold bug” of the East and the “silver elephant” of the West as “fictions,” and instead supported a uniform national paper currency on the grounds that money–of any kind–is as stable as the government that issues it. For more on her economic opinions, see “The Destiny of Our Republic” n. 4. Her monetary theories were a “disgrace” within the family, and brother Harvey and her sons campaigned enthusiastically for McKinley and the gold standard (Moynihan, Rebel 166-67). Given his own views on the subject, it is interesting that, of the two paragraphs of his sister’s speech that appeared in Harvey’s Oregonian, one was the final paragraph, in which Abigail voices her scandalous opinion. Although out of step with her relatives and the national Republican party, on this subject Scott Duniway was more in step with many Republicans in Oregon. The state Republican convention of 1890 actually had adopted a free silver platform and, in subsequent years, straddled the fence. In 1896, the national party platform explicitly opposed free silver, but the state party voted down a resolution opposing it. Instead, it endorsed the more ambiguous national party platform of 1892, calling for parity of values between gold and silver and demanding that “every dollar, paper or coin, issued by the Government, shall be as good as any other.” Silver Republicans saw this compromise as vindication, while gold advocates, including Harvey W. Scott, saw it as subterfuge (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 309-10). McKinley carried Oregon, due in no small measure to Harvey’s weighty support (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 51-53). (1833-1901): twenty-third President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland. A small, militarily inconsequential battle fought on October 21, 1861, on the Potomac near Leesburg, Virginia; bungling in the chain of command produced disastrous Union casualties and a Congressional inquest (Thomas L. Breiner, “The Battle of Ball’s Bluff“). Actually two engagements, fought in the summers of 1861 and 1862 at a small stream near Manassas in northern Virginia; both gave military advantage to the Confederacy. (1808-1889): president of the Confederacy for the duration of the Civil War, 1861-65. Here Scott Duniway is repeating an older suggestion for promoting political awareness rather than the more recent idea of utilizing the woman’s club movement to achieve this end (see also her 1880 address to O.S.W.S.A). Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947): one of most capable administrators and organizers in suffrage cause; born Ripon, Wisconsin; graduated Iowa Agricultural College, 1880; principal and superintendent of schools, Mason City, Iowa; married Leo Chapman, 1885, joining him as co-editor, Mason City Republican; after brief period as journalist in San Francisco, entered lecture field, 1888, soon becoming State lecturer for Iowa Woman Suffrage Association; married New York civil engineer, George W. Catt, 1890; president, N.A.W.S.A., 1900-04, returning in 1915; authored “Winning Plan” that combined efforts to obtain suffrage at both state and national levels; president, International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-23; co-founder, League of Women Voters, 1919; campaigned for peace and disarmament (Flexner, “Catt”; Birdsell; Willard and Livermore 1: 162-63). Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). Florence Nightingale (1820-1910): English hospital reformer; nurse during Crimean War; formed institution for training of nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital; developed “polar-area diagram,” similar to pie chart, showing that improved sanitation decreases hospital mortality rates; developed Model Hospital Statistical Form; Royal Statistical Society, 1858; honorary member, American Statistical Association, 1874; worked for army sanitary reform, improvement of nursing, and public health in India (Cynthia Audain, “Florence Nightingale”). Clara Barton (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for 23 years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).
“The manifold duties of the mother . . .” – circa 1894-1896
Very little is known about this untitled and undated text, in which Scott Duniway argues that domestic service must be made a respectable occupation. Her discussion is particularly interesting for three reasons. First, in her view, the topic of domestic service is important not only to the wealthy and privileged, for whom she has little […]
Very little is known about this untitled and undated text, in which Scott Duniway argues that domestic service must be made a respectable occupation. Her discussion is particularly interesting for three reasons. First, in her view, the topic of domestic service is important not only to the wealthy and privileged, for whom she has little time, but for families everywhere, and families of working women in particular. Abigail herself had hired a Chinese cook and a housekeeper when the family moved to Portland in 1871, just as she was launching the New Northwest, and knew that she could lead a public life because she had domestic help.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-manifold-duties-of-the-mother-%e2%80%9d-circa-1894-1896/#footnote_1_60" id="identifier_1_60" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="“Abigail Scott Duniway” 9; I. Ross, Ladies 193. Even earlier, while they lived in Albany, Abigail could manage as well as she did in part because, after the 1862 accident in which a runaway team of horses dragged a wagon over his back, rendering him a semi-invalid for life, Ben was home taking care of the youngest boys, Clyde and Ralph (born there in 1866 and 1869, respectively) (Moynihan, Rebel 76; D. Duniway 203-04).">1 Indeed, the New Northwest once praised Oregon as a place “where cooking and washing and chambermaid work are performed by Chinamen and women can engage in lucrative employment unlike women in older states.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-manifold-duties-of-the-mother-%e2%80%9d-circa-1894-1896/#footnote_2_60" id="identifier_2_60" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Qtd. in Capell 45. Scott Duniway’s attitude toward the Chinese was somewhat more complicated than might be suggested by her frequent condemnation of the consignment of women to “the political category of idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen,” or by her more general criticism of foreign-born voters. She believed that Chinese servants enabled women to escape the drudgery of their house-bound sphere, and dismissed much anti-Chinese agitation as the complaining of indolent white men, both native and foreign born, who simply were not as industrious and who, in any case, would not perform the same jobs. At the same time, she favored restrictions on immigration for reasons both noble and not. In 1882, when President Arthur vetoed an exclusion act that would have suspended immigration for twenty years, the New Northwest editorialized that he had “given heed to the prattle of sentimentalists of the East” and “accepted the buncombe words of theorists thousands of miles away” rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses to “filth, slavery and degradation.” At the height of anti-Chinese riots in Seattle in February, 1886, the Governor declared martial law, there were casualties when the militia fired on the mob, and U.S. troops were sent. On the very eve of this violence’s spread to Portland, Abigail again blamed “the European foreigners who are menacing our country’s peace” and advocated restriction as an antidote to slave labor and a means to break the hold of “the Chinese Six Companies [who] comprise a syndicate of slave-owners who are just as much to be despised, and ought as surely to be prohibited from operating in America, as were the African slave-dealers of a bygone era.” Yet, she offers, exclusion also would prevent the Chinese “from overrunning the United States and draining our money from the country”; therefore, “we can see no danger from the presence of a limited number of the barbarians to do menial service among us.” This latter reason glosses another, much uglier, column from 1882, which treats the “Mongolian evil” and describes the “hordes” who are “swarming” Portland’s streets, who “are not in any sense of us,” who “do not come to build up the country” but “to rob it of its substance” while “replenishing their ranks forever like a perpetual swarm of ever-increasing house-flies.” It contends that “when a building, a block, a city, or a country” is “befouled” by the Chinese, “it can never be reclaimed and purified for the occupancy of a cleanly race.” Therefore, “while it is right in principle that the Chinamen should seek our shores, and equally right for us to let them come as fast as we can entertain or employ them with benefit to ourselves and our homes,” their numbers should be restricted lest “Asiatic immigration . . . play havoc with us” even as “European immigration played havoc with the Indians in this country”! Perhaps the best that can be said is that, while she (like her brother, Harvey) supported limited immigration and general exclusion for economic and racial reasons, she seems never to have endorsed the even more drastic policy of expulsion (New Northwest 14 Apr. 1876, 25 Aug. 1876, 6 Apr. 1822, 22 June 1882, 11 Feb. 1886; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 79-82, 278-79, 2: 52, 3: 224-26).">2 Second, her concern for the status of housekeepers is consistent with her general concern for the economic well-being of workers and laborers. Third, the text elaborates an extended example that obviously is autobiographical: In her story of a woman who must support her family after her husband is crippled, Abigail unquestionably is writing about herself in the third person, with only a touch of artistic license.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-manifold-duties-of-the-mother-%e2%80%9d-circa-1894-1896/#footnote_3_60" id="identifier_3_60" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Unlike “the woman” in the text, Scott Duniway “technically” had only one daughter. However, her eight-year-old niece, Annie, came to live with the Duniways in September, 1865, after Abigail’s younger sister, Maggie (Margaret Ann Scott Fearnside), met an early death from consumption (Moynihan, Rebel 81).">3 Thus, while the text’s time frame cannot be known conclusively, her reference, in present tense, to the “partially paralyzed husband [who] patiently awaits the final call of the pallid messenger” is a clue. Arteriosclerosis, sciatic pain, and other ailments made Ben a heavy burden in the final two years before he died (on August 4, 1896). Abigail, knowing nothing of nursing and lacking the financial resources to hire help, complained bitterly about having to care for him alone. How she must have contemplated the subject of domestic help!<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-manifold-duties-of-the-mother-%e2%80%9d-circa-1894-1896/#footnote_4_60" id="identifier_4_60" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Moynihan, Rebel 202-05. Scott Duniway’s fiction also addressed the subject of domestic service. Jean Ward observes that the short story “Judd and John Mundane” (New Northwest, February 18 and 25, 1886) “deals with issues of Chinese workers and labor reform. Labor and management give up their quarreling and join hands in interdependence, and the Anti-Coolie League becomes the Working Men’s Cooperative Union”, while “‘Gretchie,’ a novelette written circa 1896, is the story of a domestic servant, Gretchen Von Linderlitten (“Women’s Responses” 90-91 [n. 4]). The timing of “Gretchie” is particularly suggestive in this regard.">4 The text is taken from a six-page typescript in Scrapbook #1 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The manifold duties of the mother of a family have reached such complicated, not to say vast proportions, that it is no longer possible for one pair of hands to meet their requirements and at the same time satisfy the many demands upon strength and energy required outside of the home, by society, the church, the club, and the many philanthropies with which the well-to-do woman of the period is continually in touch. And when, as often happens in these later years, the wife or mother is a professional or business woman, much of whose time is necessarily occupied outside of her home, the problem of proper domestic service, and how best to secure it, becomes one of bewildering magnitude. To properly perform the multitudinous duties of the household requires, first of all, a mistress, or head, with sufficient intellectual endowments to manage a state or a nation. She must come into her kingdom endowed with culinary skill, artistic taste, a love of home, a charming personality and a commanding, though not domineering character. She must be capable of seeing the defects of her household management with clear vision, and at the same time of exercising judicious blindness when necessary. Her house-keeper, or maid of all work, must, if qualified by nature, for the manifold requirements of her position, must [sic] be endowed with excellent intellect; she must not be a mere machine, like a pianolo or a prepared pumpkin stalk, moving only as she is wrought upon by a power outside of herself, but she must have nerves of her own, and be inspired with sufficient will power and native understanding to comprehend and command the complexities of a many-sided situation. Such a girl, or woman, if American born, instinctively shrinks from the title of servant. Nothing can come of berating her for this dislike. It is American born, and is no more to be intelligently deplored or deprecated than the color of her eyes or hair. It is instilled in her soul at the common school; it graduates with her at commencement times, and enstamps its character upon her whole mental make-up from the cradle to the grave. She knows, as does everybody else, and especially those who would most thoroughly enforce this humiliating title upon her, that it carries with it the stigma of the former slave dealer. It implies passable submission to enforce the indignities from anomonal5 mistress of the house, repellant alike to her woman-hood and her education. She knows that upon the shoulders of the cook stove queen rests the most important of all the duties of every well managed home, that of kitchen engineer, and she naturally feels, and with good reason, that the shoulders of this responsible functionary ought to support as many honors as those which embellish the shoulders of any faithful officer who proudly bears the title of “Chief Engineer, U.S.N.” But she knows she will not be so recognized and honored, no matter how faithful her service, or how complete her accomplishments, so she seeks other applications, less remunerative, but to her way of thinking, as well as the world’s, more honorable. In a modern home of ten or a dozen rooms, equipped with every up-to-date requirement, there is usually installed a chief engineer, a raw recruit from the green isle of Eden6, whose highest aim is to hold me place in one of the best families for the least possible service, and whose earlier life was spent in the atmosphere of the peat bog and the pig sty under the slatternly tutelage of a mother whose highest ambition was to see how many sprouting Hibernians<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-manifold-duties-of-the-mother-%e2%80%9d-circa-1894-1896/#footnote_7_60" id="identifier_7_60" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Irish. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic society formed to defend Irish immigrants, was founded in the United States in 1836, and in Oregon in 1877. Its slogan was: Friendship, Unity, True Christian Charity. Members were barred from joining secret societies that contravened the teachings of the church (Ancient Order of Hiberians).">7 regularly stuffed with adequate potatoes. If the servant girl be of Tuetonic8, rather than of Celtic origin, the service may be varied somewhat as to style and quality, but the results are no less satisfactory. When as is an every day occurrence, the wife and mother in the modern home finds herself at the mercy of an untaught human machine, the burden of her life begins, as many so situated can testify. But if she prefers, as most women do, to cherish a false and very transparent pride, which keeps her silent, except with an occasional lady caller who knows just how it is herself, the tell-tale lines come quickly into her face, and crow tracks blossom immaturely around her eyes. Occasionally, even with the title of servant-girl branding her soul, a woman accepts domestic service as a last resort against penury, and, though a refined and educated gentleman will enter a modern home, and for a stipend, ridiculous low, when the responsibilities of the position are considered, will assume the burdens of kitchen, pantry, laundry, bed-rooms, store-rooms and furnace. She had been a dress-maker, perhaps, before seeking employment in somebody’s kitchen, or a type-writer, or a school-teacher, or a clerk, but her living expenses and those of others dependent upon her had for so long a period absorbed all her earnings that in sheer desperation she had donned the servant’s badge. She had been recognized as an individual while engaged in other lines of work, and had enjoyed such relaxation and shame after office hours as she soon finds await no servant in the modern home. What wonder that after a brief struggle she gives up her new experiment, and returns to the old routine amidst scenes where she is no longer a Bridget or a Hulda, but a Miss or Mrs. somebody, on a social footing with the people or customers whom she meets in other vocations. A woman well and widely known in social and intellectual circles, who has for many years been the bread-winner, as well as bread dispenser, in the home where her partially paralyzed husband patiently awaits the final call of the pallid messenger, never depends upon what society calls a servant, yet her home is a model of order and comfort, and its mechanism runs like clock work, although her professional duties call her daily from its immediate environments; yet this woman has reared a large family of sons and daughters to respectable and honorable maturity all of whom are now well settled in homes of their own. “How have you managed to do so much, and do it all so well,” is the query with which she is often confronted. “In the first place I discard the term servant,” she invariably explains; “there is but one class of servants who are really entitled to the name, and they are the wives and mothers of the land who toil without wages.” The ordinary bearer of this title, who demands and receives a salary, proves by the very fact of her accepting such a title, her unfitness for the post of responsibility she is called upon to occupy, and which, by its very importance, suggests the exercise of the acumen of a higher order. This famous woman had begun her married life on the far frontier after the fashion of her environments as a maid of all work in her humble home. There her children were born, and there, except for a brief period during her regularly recurring confinement, she lived amid the usual retirements of rural activities till an accident befell her husband which necessitated an entire change in her domestic realm. Having been herself a servant without wages for more than a dozen years, and having often envied the more fortunate employees of her husband, whose work was from sun to sun, while her’s was never done, this woman resolved at the very out-set of her career as a recognized bread-winner that she would revolutionize the servant girl problem in her own home. It was easier to resolve than to execute, but the demand was urgent; so when her invalid husband and growing family were installed in the village whether she had gone to earn a livelihood as a keeper of a boarding school for girls, the first great need she encountered was, of course, a house-keeper. Her surroundings were of the pro-slavery order, for it was before the war, and strong and deep was the prejudice among the poor white trash with which the community abounded, against allowing their half-clad gals to go out to service. So a woman was employed to take charge of the home, who was popularly supposed to have seen better days, albeit her whilom husband had abandoned her and their children years before, and she had carried the double burden until her girls were reared and married. This woman was given in the home of Mrs. Blank a room of her own with stove, lamp, and rocking chair, and her kitchen was provided with an easy chair and couch. She was liberally supplied with books and periodicals, and was frankly told that whenever her work for any day was done, her time should be her own. Mrs. Blank’s salary as a teacher and the weekly stipend from the dozen young lady boarders sufficed to meet all expenses, including the house-keeper’s wages, for a term of years. The house-keeper was not the Bridget or Hulda, but was accosted in a respectable manner by her legitimate employer Mrs. Johnson. Just how she managed to get all the hardest and roughest of the house-work completed and out of the way during Mrs. Blank’s school hours, or just why her cooking was always excellent, nobody cared to ask. Mrs. Johnson never intruded herself upon her employer’s company, though she was often her private and confidential counselor. The children of the household, who had been trained on the farm to do their allotted chores, without regular reminder, as cheerfully assisted the house-keeper out of school hours in their growing years as though she had been their mother; and none of the boarders showed by word or deed that she was considered in any sense a servant. But on one fateful evening, when there was an extra houseful of company, one of the boarders, a new comer from the city, who had not fully learned the household’s ways, thoughtlessly remarked in Mrs. Johnson’s hearing “Oh, she’s nobody, she[’s] only Mrs. Blank’s servant girl.” Mrs. Johnson left the house without warning. She was willing to work, to oblige, to be kind, to be faithful, but to be nobody, to be only Mrs. Blank’s servant girl, it was too much. Mrs. Blank found the kitchen sink groaning under its burden of unwashed dishes, the kitchen table was loaded with cans of well sealed fruit, and the dasher churn (for it was before creameries were) stood a great yellow churning left to its rate just as the butter had come. There was a note on Mrs. Johnson’s table, tear blotted and brief, “You have been kind to me, dear Mrs. Blank,” it said, “but,” and here were two or three illegible words, “I could not be a servant in nobody’s house.” A year of such discomfort in the busy household as the reader must be left to imagine followed Mrs. Johnson’s retirement. For a long time it was impossible to find another housekeeper able to meet the requirements. The first servant engaged from necessity, no more competent as a cook than she would have been as secretary of war, but she felt wholly above her station, and was so frightened at the prospect of being looked upon as a servant in reality, she wore a dress hat trimmed with roses and feathers when waiting on the table or washing her dishes. Mrs. Blank worked herself into a fit of nervous prostration trying when her school duties were at an end for the day to do another day’s work in kitchen and pantry, and was at last compelled to close her school. After half a dozen other trials and failures had followed in rapid succession, then the following advertisement was sent to a city paper. “Wanted: A housekeeper. Must be a good cook, with sufficient common sense to be her own manager. No servant need apply. Salary no object.” A Miss Doe answered the ad in person. She was a New England maiden, of uncertain age, a shrill speaker, a high stepper, tall, sinewy, methodical, a graduate of the cooking school, and an authority upon all subjects pertaining to her domain. She was indeed no servant. She was queen of a realm, and so faithful withal that Mrs. Blank gladly abdicated her kitchen throne in her favor, and resumed her own business at the old stand. But she soon saw that Miss Doe’s extravagance would lead her household into financial ruin. Experience had made her diplomatic, so after much circumlocution, and not a little carefully concealed purturbation, she approached Miss Doe and broached her topic. “You are an excellent cook and house-keeper,” she said, with an attempt at bravery, which chilled her blood to zero, “but”, and she fairly gasped for breath, “the expenses of the house-hold are over-running the income, and I have come to confer with you about the situation.” “If I don’t suit you, you can get somebody else,” said Miss Doe, switching vigorously at the cake she was compounding. “I don’t wish you to leave me,” said Mrs. Blank, “though of course you can go at any time if you are not satisfied, but I wish to make a suggestion; tomorrow is the first day of the month. I find that I can only spare you about one hundred dollars per month for table expenses, that ought to be sufficient, for we have our own milk, butter, eggs, and chickens. Now, Miss Doe, my proposition is this: If you will take one hundred dollars per month and supply the table with all the delicacies of every season, you shall have a commission on your purchases of every cent that is left over in addition to your salary every month.” The effect upon Miss Doe’s executive capacity was magical. From a careless, extravagant consumer of raw material she became a close calculator, and while the quantity or quality of her table supplies was not perceptibly impaired, the saving to Mrs. Blank’s bank account was exceptionally satisfactory. The moral to this overtrue tale is plain. Domestic service must be elevated to a position of trust, and must not come into competition with the unpaid toil of wives and mothers. Every woman engaged in it must be taught that it is not only not a menial service, but is the most honorable, because the most necessary occupation, upon which humanity must depend for its very existence. To this end let the idea be cultivated everywhere that the work of the wife and mother who follows no other business is that of a co-partner with the husband and father in other lines of work. This fact once established, the ingenuity of woman, spurred on by her intellect, her love of home, and her home’s necessities, will do the rest. When that time comes, she will see that no more work is left to do inside the home than the average wife and mother will be able to perform with comfort to herself and household. Then, and not till then, will the servant girl problem be in a condition to settle itself. The way is steadily opening for even the unskilled women to find employment in great manufacturing centers where food and clothing are prepared from the raw material by women. House-keeping, home-making are like everything else in human economy, undergoing a constant process of evolution. There is no more reason why every loaf of bread should be baked in a different kitchen than there is why every bushel of wheat should be ground in different mills. Already the revolution in domestic affairs has begun to take tangible shape. The laundry is gradually rising to the standard of a threshing machine, the creamery to that the spinning and power loom, the fruit cannery to the company of the great flour mills, the dishwasher to the companionship of the steam-driven mangle, and the bakery to that of a ready-made clothing store. Individual or segregated homes will not only never grow obsolete under this improved condition, through which alone the servant girl problem can be satisfactorily resolved [in] every habitation, but they will, let us strongly hope, grow more and more into favor until that modern Babylon, the average fashionable boarding houses, will be remembered only as a distorted dream. NOTES “Abigail Scott Duniway” 9; I. Ross, Ladies 193. Even earlier, while they lived in Albany, Abigail could manage as well as she did in part because, after the 1862 accident in which a runaway team of horses dragged a wagon over his back, rendering him a semi-invalid for life, Ben was home taking care of the youngest boys, Clyde and Ralph (born there in 1866 and 1869, respectively) (Moynihan, Rebel 76; D. Duniway 203-04). Qtd. in Capell 45. Scott Duniway’s attitude toward the Chinese was somewhat more complicated than might be suggested by her frequent condemnation of the consignment of women to “the political category of idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen,” or by her more general criticism of foreign-born voters. She believed that Chinese servants enabled women to escape the drudgery of their house-bound sphere, and dismissed much anti-Chinese agitation as the complaining of indolent white men, both native and foreign born, who simply were not as industrious and who, in any case, would not perform the same jobs. At the same time, she favored restrictions on immigration for reasons both noble and not. In 1882, when President Arthur vetoed an exclusion act that would have suspended immigration for twenty years, the New Northwest editorialized that he had “given heed to the prattle of sentimentalists of the East” and “accepted the buncombe words of theorists thousands of miles away” rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses to “filth, slavery and degradation.” At the height of anti-Chinese riots in Seattle in February, 1886, the Governor declared martial law, there were casualties when the militia fired on the mob, and U.S. troops were sent. On the very eve of this violence’s spread to Portland, Abigail again blamed “the European foreigners who are menacing our country’s peace” and advocated restriction as an antidote to slave labor and a means to break the hold of “the Chinese Six Companies [who] comprise a syndicate of slave-owners who are just as much to be despised, and ought as surely to be prohibited from operating in America, as were the African slave-dealers of a bygone era.” Yet, she offers, exclusion also would prevent the Chinese “from overrunning the United States and draining our money from the country”; therefore, “we can see no danger from the presence of a limited number of the barbarians to do menial service among us.” This latter reason glosses another, much uglier, column from 1882, which treats the “Mongolian evil” and describes the “hordes” who are “swarming” Portland’s streets, who “are not in any sense of us,” who “do not come to build up the country” but “to rob it of its substance” while “replenishing their ranks forever like a perpetual swarm of ever-increasing house-flies.” It contends that “when a building, a block, a city, or a country” is “befouled” by the Chinese, “it can never be reclaimed and purified for the occupancy of a cleanly race.” Therefore, “while it is right in principle that the Chinamen should seek our shores, and equally right for us to let them come as fast as we can entertain or employ them with benefit to ourselves and our homes,” their numbers should be restricted lest “Asiatic immigration . . . play havoc with us” even as “European immigration played havoc with the Indians in this country”! Perhaps the best that can be said is that, while she (like her brother, Harvey) supported limited immigration and general exclusion for economic and racial reasons, she seems never to have endorsed the even more drastic policy of expulsion (New Northwest 14 Apr. 1876, 25 Aug. 1876, 6 Apr. 1822, 22 June 1882, 11 Feb. 1886; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 79-82, 278-79, 2: 52, 3: 224-26). Unlike “the woman” in the text, Scott Duniway “technically” had only one daughter. However, her eight-year-old niece, Annie, came to live with the Duniways in September, 1865, after Abigail’s younger sister, Maggie (Margaret Ann Scott Fearnside), met an early death from consumption (Moynihan, Rebel 81). Moynihan, Rebel 202-05. Scott Duniway’s fiction also addressed the subject of domestic service. Jean Ward observes that the short story “Judd and John Mundane” (New Northwest, February 18 and 25, 1886) “deals with issues of Chinese workers and labor reform. Labor and management give up their quarreling and join hands in interdependence, and the Anti-Coolie League becomes the Working Men’s Cooperative Union”, while “‘Gretchie,’ a novelette written circa 1896, is the story of a domestic servant, Gretchen Von Linderlitten (“Women’s Responses” 90-91 [n. 4]). The timing of “Gretchie” is particularly suggestive in this regard. Probably “a nominal” is meant. Ireland Irish. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic society formed to defend Irish immigrants, was founded in the United States in 1836, and in Oregon in 1877. Its slogan was: Friendship, Unity, True Christian Charity. Members were barred from joining secret societies that contravened the teachings of the church (Ancient Order of Hiberians). Germanic
NATIONAL AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION CONVENTION – circa January 31-February 5, 1895
In 1895 Scott Duniway traveled all the way to Atlanta for the first N.A.W.S.A. convention held in the South, or outside Washington, D.C. The History of Woman Suffrage reported that the following speech provoked “much laughter.”1 This one-paragraph synopsis, remarkably, is the most complete account of a Scott Duniway speech in the entire, six-volume History, […]
In 1895 Scott Duniway traveled all the way to Atlanta for the first N.A.W.S.A. convention held in the South, or outside Washington, D.C. The History of Woman Suffrage reported that the following speech provoked “much laughter.”1 This one-paragraph synopsis, remarkably, is the most complete account of a Scott Duniway speech in the entire, six-volume History, which ignores other, far more important–and far more controversial–efforts. That so key a record would so slight so important an advocate of woman suffrage in the West speaks volumes about its biases and limitations. There are in Oregon three classes of women opposed to suffrage. 1. Women who are so overworked that they have no time to think of it. They are joined to their wash-tubs; let them alone. But the children of these overworked women are coming on. 2. Women who have usurped all the rights in the matrimonial category, their husbands’ as well as their own. The husbands of such women are always loudly opposed to suffrage. The “sassiest” man in any community is the hen-pecked husband away from home. 3. Young girls matrimonially inclined, who fear the avowal of a belief in suffrage would injure their chances. I can assure such girls that a woman who wishes to vote gets more offers than one who does not. Their motto should be “Liberty first, and union afterwards.” The man whose wife is a clinging vine is apt to be like the oaks in the forest that are found wrapped in vines–dead at the top. NOTES 4: 249.
This address is an excellent example of Scott Duniway’s praise of the land, people, and opportunities of the Pacific Northwest. The Congress of Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago1 was a fitting occasion for such a unifying address: Scott Duniway uses the quatercentennial of Columbus’ pioneering voyage to relate the pioneer story of […]
This address is an excellent example of Scott Duniway’s praise of the land, people, and opportunities of the Pacific Northwest. The Congress of Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_1_56" id="identifier_1_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A world’s fair, opening January 22, 1893, held in celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage, attended by more than 21.4 million visitors. A series of congresses were convened under the auspices of the woman’s branch of the World’s Congress Auxiliary, including a Women’s Congress and a Suffrage Congress, over a six-month period (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 217). The best documented of these was the first, the World’s Congress of Representative Women of All Lands, held May 15-21, in which 528 delegates representing 27 countries and 126 organizations participated. Described as “the greatest assemblage of women which ever had been held, ” its published proceedings ran to nearly one thousand pages (Sewall), and it was remarked in History of Woman Suffrage (4: 609-10). Some women spoke at more than one congress; for example, Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper gave thirty-six addresses during the course of the exposition (Eagle 296). Also, the label “Congress of Women” seems to have been adopted generically to refer to all. Thus, pinpointing the congress at which Scott Duniway delivered this address is difficult. Her dating of her speech rules out the Congress of Representative Women, and she appears nowhere in its proceedings. Her speech is excerpted in a second publication (Eagle). Only sixteen women (out of hundreds) are reported in both publications, and in fewer than half of these cases are similar speeches reproduced, so the latter appears to be a wider-ranging compendium of selected speeches from the different congresses.">1 was a fitting occasion for such a unifying address: Scott Duniway uses the quatercentennial of Columbus’ pioneering voyage to relate the pioneer story of the Oregon Territory. She creates a seamless historical narrative of discovery, from Columbus to Balboa, to Robert Gray, to Lewis and Clark, to the pioneer settlers of the “forties and fifties,” to the present. The voyage of discovery that she recounts is, at first face, primarily spatial (geographical) and temporal (historical) in nature. However, this particular speech, and the epideictic form that it illustrates, are especially noteworthy because multiple dimensions of “discovery” are invoked simultaneously in order to convey Scott Duniway’s argument. A third dimension of this voyage is moral. Consistent with the spirit of manifest destiny in nineteenth-century America, the unfolding discovery of the Pacific Northwest incarnates the march of human progress. The role of “destiny which directs the progress of civilization in every age” is evident, for example, in Scott Duniway’s treatment of indigenous peoples, from the Aztecs to the Indian tribes of the Columbia River Valley. The extent of her treatment is unusual for a paean to westward expansion, but its theme is typical. That “Anglo Saxons” would conquer the continent was inevitable; that the natives would be vanquished was fated. In this way, Scott Duniway echoes the theme of the “vanishing red man” that was dominant in her day.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_2_56" id="identifier_2_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="For one discussion of this theme in discourses about Native Americans, see Lake, “Between” 125-29. Scott Duniway’s views on Indian affairs were typical for her day. In 1877, the New Northwest, reporting Nez Perce attacks on settlers at Mount Idaho, commented that the natives had reverted to their “savage instincts” despite the government’s “peace policy,” and opined that General Howard’s only failure was to have sufficient troops (29 June). The next year recounting more native atrocities, it preached: “Shame upon a government that treats with creatures beside whom coyotes are fairies and hyenas angels. Let us think of something else, or we’ll be tempted to shoulder a hatchet and embark for the border, to prove that armed women can fight, whether they’re allowed to be voters or not” (8 Aug. 1878). In 1881, a front-page column editorialized that Indians should fend for themselves rather than be given everything for free by the government (9 June).">2 A fourth dimension of this voyage is gendered and sociocultural. Scott Duniway takes pains to acknowledge the contributions of women, from Queen Isabella of Spain to Bertha Honoré Palmer of the Board of Lady Managers of the Exposition. Expanding roles for women, and increasing public recognition of their contributions, become another sort of discovery, another aspect of human progress; they reflect, in her words, the “discovery of womanhood.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_3_56" id="identifier_3_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Indeed, the exposition itself heralded this discovery, and intentionally so. Anthony was determined that the experience of the 1876 Centennial, at which women were excluded, not be repeated and that woman’s rights be a highly visible subject of the fair. Her personal lobbying in Washington, particularly among the wives of Senators, Congressmen, and cabinet members, was largely responsible for the provision of a Board of Lady Managers. Socialite Bertha Honoré Palmer and the other managers then placed women’s achievements before the public eye, not only in a magnificent Woman’s Building, with a five-thousand-seat auditorium and marble busts of Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony eying the proceedings, but in virtually every state building at the fair. Anthony and Lucy Stone spoke often and drew large crowds. Anthony and Frances Willard announced the formation of something called the Anti-Saloon League. All this activity caused one young (male) observer to lament that “this World’s Fair has positively set afire the suffragists” (Holbrook 212-13; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 232-33). What worried the men cheered the women. In an open letter announcing the reinvigoration of O.S.W.S.A. (which had been moribund following the demise of the New Northwest and Abigail’s Idaho diversions), published in the Oregonian (July 5, 1894), Scott Duniway (a vice-president of N.A.W.S.A.* at the time) and two others wrote: “The world’s Columbian exposition gave a wonderful impetus to the equal suffrage movement, by bringing together the leading women of every state and nation, holding a continuous woman’s congress for a period of six months. The congress was of itself the first sign of official recognition, by our government and by the world, of the great feminine but hitherto forgotten equation in governmental quantities. Through it the women of all nations and all regions came for the first time into personal contact. They came together, not through the accident of birth, nor because of any lucky alliance with prominent or fortunate men, but because of their own inherent ability and self-hood. The congress discussed all sorts of subjects, including religion and politics, agnosticism and orthodoxy; social purity, education and morality; temperance and sanitation, culinary lore and occult phenomena. Science and invention, literature, philanthropy, poesy, progress and prosperity–everything in which humanity holds common interest, received attention in its turn. Corporations, copartnerships, monetary science, co-operative housekeeping, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, and, above all, baby culture, received due consideration. In every phase of these deliberations the necessity for woman’s enfranchisement was self evident. Every address made, every thought invoked involving any philanthropic or financial consideration whatsoever; every enlightened impulse and every awakening aspiration cast an unerring search light into woman’s past history, and aroused new protest against her present status as a political, financial, conjugal and domestic nonentity. The discussions increased in spirit as the congress proceeded, and soon the demand for woman’s enfranchisement became fashionable” (Mss 432B 16: 162, OR Hist. Soc.). [*National American Woman Suffrage Association, which resulted from the merger in 1890 of the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations.]">3 Scott Duniway’s praise of the Pacific Northwest also implicitly advances two deliberative aims. First, although she shuns the label “real estate boomer,” this address encourages her Eastern audience to resettle in the abundant West. The panic of 1893 was just underway and an “army of floating labor” would congregate at the Exposition, looking for new opportunities.4 In this context, a paean to the opportunities that await in her region echoes her well-known critique of the financial arrangements of the day5 and urges her audience to act against them by relocating. Second, this address argues for woman’s rights by indirection. Only a single brief comment, that she does not believe in a “one-sexed country” any more than in a one-sexed government or home, raises the issue explicitly. However, the speech begins with a reversal, in which Abigail considers what might have been had Columbus landed in the west. This reversal, which constructs a new historical narrative different from that “known” by her audience, invites the audience to imagine different possibilities, to entertain a different story of America and a different order of things. The remainder of the speech then treats the sexes equally: Opportunities, as well as corresponding obligations to work and contribute to the “up-building” of the region, await both men and women without distinction. This appeal invites her audience to imagine that the order of the sexes might have been different; if only Columbus had sailed the Pacific, the nation would have been founded on principles of equality, spreading slowly eastward as the nation grew, and our long history of struggle for woman’s rights would have been avoided.6 Crucially, then, the “known” order of the sexes becomes an accident of history, no longer inherent in the nature of things. Finally, the argument that things can be different presages an argument to make things different. In this manner, her praise of a land of equal opportunities indirectly argues for equality of opportunity. In sum, this address invites other women and their families to become “pioneers” in all these many senses: geographically, economically, morally, socially, and intellectually. Moreover, Scott Duniway herself–as a pioneer settler of Oregon, a woman, and an equal rights advocate–has lived this multidimensional voyage of discovery. Hence, in a final significant rhetorical appeal, she enacts this invitation; that is, she becomes living proof of the truth of her message. The text below principally follows a manuscript in the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. A (apparently subsequent) typescript of the address, hand-edited by Abigail but of uncertain origin, also appears in Scrapbook #2 of these papers. A highly abridged version appears in the official proceedings of the Congress.7 There are many cosmetic, and some substantive, differences among the three, marked as follows: [ ]: in manuscript and typescript, not in Congress < >: in typescript and Congress, not in manuscript { }: in typescript (whether typed or subsequently hand-edited) only / /: in Congress only \ \: in manuscript only Alternate renderings appear in the notes. Gentlemen and Ladies: If the illustrious navigator in whose honor we are now holding this wonderful World’s Columbian Exposition had so shaped his adventurous voyage as to have first sighted land on the western slope of the two Americas, the history of this continent’s discovery and development would have been strangely metamorphosed. Then, the star of Empire, lured by balmy skies, would have made its way eastward, loitering leisurely in its course, often halting for generations to enjoy the equable temperature of the Pacific Coast, and never pressing onward to encounter the more rigorous climate of the Atlantic border until compelled to advance by the civilization surging behind it. But the destiny which directs the progress of civilization in every age never for a moment forgot the golden West, and, with a wise design of which we, today, are reaping the benefits, the preserves of the Pacific Northwest were held in reserve in the nation’s youth, that they might become the heritage of the fortunate descendants of the hardy stock of Anglo-Saxons who long ago conquered the adverse climatic elements of the Atlantic seaboard, in blissful ignorance, through all their years of toil, that the balmy zephyrs of the Pacific were playing at hide-and-seek among Sierran vales, or singing summer-laden paeans through the mighty trees where rolls the Oregon.8 And yet, this favored land had not been left for long without a witness. Destiny, as if mindful that some day the children of men might wonder at her apparent partiality to later generations, began as early as the year 1513 to make preliminary preparations for carrying out her plans. [In that year Vasco Núñez de Balboa9, a Spanish adventurer who must have been born for the purposes of discovery, since he proved to be good at nothing else, secreted himself in a trading vessel, and after narrowly escaping death by order of Captain Enciso10, who for some unexplained reason failed at the last moment to execute his command, was set ashore upon the edges of the Caribbean Sea. Of the strange land into which he was thus thrown Balboa knew little except the rumors that had reached him in regard to the expeditions of Cortez11 who had previously penetrated that country, carrying devastation into the lands belonging to the Aztec worshippers of the sun. The excitement into which Balboa was thus thrown12 proved exactly to his taste. He became at once a daring and unscrupulous leader, whose name is destined to go down through history as the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. The history of this discovery requires no repetition here. Let us only pause a moment in regretful memory of the Montezumas, the last of the rulers of the Aztec race13 whose domain bordered “the sleeping waters beyond America.” Balboa, after many expeditions, in which he was so successful as to excite the jealously of his rivals, was ignominiously beheaded by order of Pedrarius Dávila<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_14_56" id="identifier_14_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Pedro Arias de Avila (a.k.a. Pedrarias Davila) (1440?-1530): from Segovia, Spain; soldier, knight and colonial administrator; married intimate friend of Queen Isabella; commanded largest Spanish expedition to New World, and first to found permanent colonies, including Panama, 1514, and Nicaragua, 1522; responsible for judicial murder of Balboa; founded Panama City, 1519; original party to agreement leading to discovery of Peru, but withdrew, 1526; superseded as Governor of Panama and retired to Leon, Nicaragua, 1526; remembered as cruel, unscrupulous man of bad character (“Pedro Arias de Avila“).">14, for the alleged crime of disloyalty to the Spanish crown. He died protesting his innocence, and his headless body was subjected before burial to the usual brutal indignities of a barbaric populace. In the year 1519 the ill-fated commander, Magellan<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_15_56" id="identifier_15_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521): Portugese navigator and explorer who sailed under both Portugese and Spanish flags, sailed around South America–discovering Straits of Magellan–and across the Pacific, killed in the Philippines, his expedition continued to Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe.">15, started on his famous voyage which resulted in the discovery of the long sought route to the Indies. It was he who gave the name Pacific to the mighty discovery of Balboa, the wondrous ocean of the Occident from whose singing shores I have come to greet you. California was discovered in 1534, by Orton Jimenes, a mutineer who had previously incited an outbreak on board the ship of which he was pilot, which resulted in the tragic death of Commander Magellan.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_16_56" id="identifier_16_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway’s history appears faulty. Fortún Jiménez led a mutiny against a ship, commanded by Diego Becerra, which had been sent for westward exploration by Cortés in 1553; Jiménez sailed to a bay, which he named La Paz, which he thought was an island but which was the peninsula of Baja California; Jimenéz was killed in a skirmish with Indians on the mainland (Caughey 45).">16 But to Sir Francis Drake17 unquestionably18 belongs the honor of having been the first of the European race to land upon the coast of the present state of California, which he did in June of the year 1579. It was not till after the lapse of nearly two centuries, in August of the year 1775, that the great headlands of the Columbia River were first discovered or outlined upon any chart. In this year Commander Heceta19 discovered a promontory which he called Cape San Roque; and immediately south of it, in latitude 46º, an opening in the land between headlands of the true nature of which he was in doubt. This opening is represented on old Spanish charts by the names Entrada de Ascension, and Rio de San Roque, and is without doubt the mouth of the Columbia River. Of this discovery Captain Robert Greenhow, a painstaking Pacific Coast historian<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_20_56" id="identifier_20_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1800-1854). The work referred to probably is: The history of Oregon and California: and the other territories of the North-West coast of North America, accompanied by a geographical view and map of those countries, and a number of documents as proofs and illustrations of the history. Boston: Little, 1844.">20, tells us that this discovery of Heceta was undoubtedly the mouth of the greatest river on the western side of the American continent, the which, in 1792, was first entered by the ship Columbia from Boston, under the command of Robert Gray<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_21_56" id="identifier_21_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1755-1806): born Rhode Island; first to circumnavigate globe under U.S. flag, in sloop Lady Washington, 1787-90; on second voyage, in Columbia, 1791-93, discovered Columbia River, May 11, 1792, giving foundation to U.S. claims of title to region (Corning 103; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 127).">21, and has ever since been known as the Columbia River. Captain Vancouver<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_22_56" id="identifier_22_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="George Vancouver (1757-1798): English navigator; served under Captain James Cook; meticulously surveyed Pacific Coast from present-day San Francisco to British Columbia, 1791-95, but overlooked mouth of Columbia River and Grays Harbor (Corning 254; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 127).">22, who was employed by the British government to conduct scientific surveys on the coast shortly after the war of the revolution, beheld the headlands of the Columbia a short time before their discovery by Captain Gray. But, although the weather was clear, he decided that “no river was there; only a sort of bay.” Captain Robert Gray, who happened to be cruising in contiguous waters, in the employ of a firm of Boston traders, upon finding that Captain Vancouver was not disposed to credit his theory of an open river, made extended observations on his own account, and after noting particularly that the color of the water of the bay was different from that of the open sea, this Yankee commander sailed inside on the 11th day of May, 1792. Concerning this important discovery Captain Gray said in his log book: “At four o’clock on the morning of the 11th we beheld our desired port, bearing east-southeast, distant six leagues. At 8 A.M., being a little to the windward of the entrance to the harbor, we bore away and ran in east-northeast, between the breakers, having from five to seven fathoms of water. When we came over the bar we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered. Many canoes came alongside. . . The entrance between the bars bore west-southwest, distant ten miles; the north side of the river, distant a half mile from the ship; the south side of the same two and a half miles distant; a village on the north side of the river, west by south, distant three quarters of a mile. Vast numbers of the natives came alongside. People {were} employed pumping the salt water out of our casks while the ship floated in. So ends.” To this Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_23_56" id="identifier_23_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16).">23, Oregon’s eminent historian, author of “The Risen Atlantis,”24 adds “No, not so ends, O, modest Captain Gray, of the ship Columbia. The end is not yet, nor will be until all the vast territory, rich with every possible production, which is drained by the waters of the new-found river, shall have yielded up its illimitable wealth to distant generations.”] Let us [now] turn the searchlight of history upon the Inland Empire of the Pacific Northwest and study its discovery from a landsman’s standpoint. [The time is the year 1804. Not a person within the range of my voice–not one of the hundreds of thousands gathered today within these gates–was then upon the earth in conscious form. The seasons came and went as now. Birds sang in the air, fishes swam in the water, beasts prowled in the forests, flowers rejoiced in the sunshine. The wigwam of the wild Indian occupied the site of the Columbian Exposition and the forest maiden beheld her dusky charms in the placid waters that now reflect the artistic proportions of this Woman’s Building. But Womanhood, as an entity, distinct and immortal, had not then been discovered. It was scarcely even dreamed of as a personality, existing within and of itself, like other animate things. It remained for the Board of Lady Managers of this Exposition, with Mrs. Potter Palmer<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_25_56" id="identifier_25_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918): queen of Chicago society; musician, linguist, writer, philanthropist, art collector; born and raised Louisville, Kentucky; married financial giant Potter Palmer (owner of celebrated Palmer House hotel), 1871; president, Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; regular at Jane Addam’s Hull House; supporter of Women’s Trade Union League; mildly supportive of woman suffrage but strongly opposed to militancy; retired to Sarasota, Florida, where her property “The Oaks” became bay-front community for rich and famous, and her farm “Meadowcrest Pastures” became Myakka River State Park (I. Ross, “Palmer”; Patricia Chadwick, “Historical Biography: Bertha Honore Palmer”). Says Ishbel Ross: “The World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 gave Bertha Honoré Palmer her most spectacular opportunity for civic and social leadership and brought to a triumphant culmination her career as ‘the Mrs. Astor of the Middle West.’ As chairman of the exposition’s Board of Lady Managers she made the Woman’s Building one of the exposition’s most memorable achievements by seeing to it that the exhibits from forty-seven nations–many secured through her personal approaches to government leaders and European royalty–illuminated women’s emergence as a social and economic force and created sympathy for the handicaps under which they still labored” (I. Ross, “Palmer” 9).">25 at their head, to conceive and carry out the dreams of utility and beauty which we perceive around us. Just here let us pay a passing tribute to the illustrious prototype of these women, Queen Isabella of Spain<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_26_56" id="identifier_26_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Isabella I (1451-1504): queen of Castile (1474-1504) and of Aragon (1479-1504), ruling the two kingdoms jointly from 1479 with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon (Ferdinand V of Castile), and effecting the permanent union of Spain.">26, who, in spite of the narrow bigotry of her environment, pierced the gloom of superstition and ignorance with the eye of prophecy, and by laying her jewels at the feet of Columbus, made the present discovery of Womanhood possible. The search light of history shows us that] in the year 1804 an expedition led by Captains Lewis<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_27_56" id="identifier_27_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146).">27 and Clark<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_28_56" id="identifier_28_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55).">28 started westward from a point east of the Mississippi river, into the unexplored and almost unknown wilds stretching across the North American continent.29 [It was a reckless and daring expedition, quite equal in perilous endeavor to any ever undertaken in earlier times by Cortez or Balboa, or Magellan or Heceta or Vancouver or Gray. It numbered 9 young Kentuckians, 14 soldiers, 2 French watermen, 1 hunter, 1 interpreter, 1 negro servant, and no woman.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_30_56" id="identifier_30_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Although no woman departed St. Louis, of course, one woman later would play a role as translator: Sacagawea, wife of the French trader Charbonneau, who joined the expedition at Fort Mandan in November, 1804. In light of subsequent events, Sacagawea’s absence from Scott Duniway’s narrative is noteworthy. It could be understood as reflecting the institutionalized racism of her day. It also reflects the fact that Sacagawea was not embraced as a historically significant American heroine until 1902, with the publication of Eva Emery Dye’s popular historical novel, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark. Certainly, Abigail’s tune would change dramatically about a decade later (see “The Pioneer Mother“).">30] After a summer of wild, enjoyable adventure in the wilderness, the party went into winter quarters in the fall of the same year on the banks of the upper Missouri river, in what is now the State of Montana. The following year, after having grown accustomed to their adventurous life, they pitched camp for winter quarters at the mouth of the Lou Lou fork of the Bitterroot river, a branch of the Upper Missouri, near what is now the thriving modern city of Missoula. From this point they made frequent excursions, and by ascending Lou Lou fork discovered the now famous Lolo trail through the otherwise formidable Bitterroot mountains. After having suffered severely from cold and hunger the party reached a Nez Perce village in the early spring, situated on an open plain contiguous to the south fork of the Clearwater, an important tributary to the Snake River. [Captain Clark was the first white man to discover the Snake river of our modern geographies, originally known on the maps as Lewis and Clark’s river.] In passing down the Clearwater the party noted three creeks, the most famous of these being now known as the Potlatch, which fructifies the beautiful and extensive Paradise Valley of Idaho, in the midst of which sits Moscow[, a border town of sufficient pretensions to have already furnished the State of Idaho with a United States Senator who is now the state’s governor<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_31_56" id="identifier_31_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William J. McConnell (1839-1925): born Commerce, Michigan; went to California, 1860, Oregon, 1862 (where taught school), and walked to Boise City, Idaho, 1863; while a vegetable farmer in October, 1864, the victim of a gang of horse thieves, which he and others apprehended, killing three, wounding a fourth, and later capturing, extracting a confession, and shooting the leader; afterward offered his services and the Payette Vigilance Committee, or Committee of Safety, was born; married Louisa Brown, 1866; deputy U.S. Marshal, 1865-67; businessman, Humboldt County, California, 1867-72, when returned to Oregon; president, state senate, 1882; moved to Idaho as merchant, banker; member, Idaho Constitutional Convention, 1890; one of three Senators elected by Idaho legislature, 1890, the result of “political chicanery” between factions within the Republican Party (he received a shortened term by virtue of drawing the short straw among the three); Governor, 1893-96; U.S. Indian Inspector, 1897-1901; immigrant inspector, 1909–? (Beal and Wells 2: 72-75, 82-84, 343; Bancroft, History of Washington 457; F. Peterson 160; Who was Who 803).">31, and a representative {citizen} who is a member of the United States Congress<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_32_56" id="identifier_32_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Willis Sweet (1856-1925): attorney; born Alburg Springs, Vermont; attended common schools and University of Nebraska, Lincoln; printer by trade; moved to Moscow, Idaho, 1881; appointed U.S. Attorney, 1988; admitted to bar, 1889; associate justice, Idaho Supreme Court, 1889; first president, Board of Regents, University of Idaho, 1889-93; three terms in U.S. House, 1890-95; also embroiled in political chicanery of the time, on opposite sides from McConnell within Republican Party; unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate, 1896; resumed law practice, Coeur d’Alene; attorney general, Puerto Rico, 1903-05; edited newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 1913 until death (Bancroft, History of Washington 583; Beal and Wells 2: 73; “Sweet, Willis”).">32 The journey of Lewis and Clark down the Snake River [to its junction with the Columbia, and thence down the Columbia to the present site of Astoria, thence to Clatsop Plains on the western coast of Oregon, which place they reached in November of the year 1805,] was a series of exciting, laborious and often perilous adventures. But they reached the coast in safety and erected a rude fortification for winter quarters which they named Fort Clatsop. [The natives swarmed around them in great numbers, from whom they learned that white men had before visited the locality for purposes of trade. They belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company of trappers and traders, of whom Lewis and Clark said: “The Indians inform us that they speak the same language as we do; and, indeed, the few words which the Indians have learnt from the sailors, such as musket, powder, shot, knife, file, heave-the-lead, damned rascal and other phrases of that description, show that the visitors speak the English language.” Colonel Gilbert, in his “Historic Sketches”33, tells34 that the long isolation, from civilization of this little forlorn hope of American explorers is thrown into strong relief by a statement that was penned and fastened to the inside walls of their fort as they turned from it on their way back across the continent. It said: “The object of this last is that through the medium of some civilized person who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose names are hereunto annexed, and who were sent out by the government to explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, where they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and departed on the 23d day of March, 1806, on their return to the United States by the same route by which they had come out.” An inventory of the merchandise upon which they depended for the purchase of provisions on the35 way home, revealed one blue and six scarlet robes, one United States artillery hat and coat, five robes made from the flag, and a few old clothes trimmed with ribbon, all of which could have been tied up in a couple of handkerchiefs. Nothing daunted by this meager array of merchandise,] they started on their return /after a stay of some time/, and after a leisurely voyage up the Columbia they reached the Willamette river, called by the natives Multnomah, which was discovered by Captain Clark on the 2d day of April, 1806. Continuing their journey up the Columbia they found the Dalles and Deschutes Indians very hostile and inhospitable. Doubtless the premonition of their forthcoming fate had dawned upon the tribes, and the instinct of self-preservation, powerful even when hopeless, had been awakened by rumors of a dreaded invasion of which these explorers were deemed36 forerunners. But Yellept, the head chief of the Walla Wallas, inspired no doubt by the same premonitions, although they affected him differently, received the party with savage demonstrations of joy.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_37_56" id="identifier_37_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cf. Gilbert: “Could this chief have looked forward fifty years, with the eye of divination, and beheld his successor Peo-peo-mux-mux, when a prisoner, murdered on the banks of that same stream by members of the race to which his guests belonged, it would have been a grave that he would have shown them, instead of an open hand of friendship and charity” (40). Further details concerning Yellept and his relationship with the expedition can be found in Ambrose (303-04, 358-59).">37 He begged them to partake of his hospitality, and urged them to invite all nations to treat the Indians kindly. Setting an example himself, he brought them an armful of wood and a platter of roasted mullets with his own hands–a most peculiar service from the hands of an Indian chieftain, since it is a well known part of the Indian’s unwritten code to delegate every kind of domestic duties to women, including every burden of the camp and fire incident to their primitive modes of life. Colonel Gilbert, in the “Historic Sketches” [before alluded to], tells us that Yellept had five sons who were all slain in battle or perished miserably from white men’s diseases. A number of years after Lewis and Clark had partaken of his hospitality this noble chieftain saw the last one of them die. Heartbroken, the old man called his tribe together, and lying down upon the body of his son in the grave, he sternly commanded them to cover him up with his dead. A wail of lamentation went up from his people, but they buried him alive as he had ordered, and the glory and greatness of the Walla Wallas had departed. The modern psychic tells us, upon evidence that to him is demonstration, that the Indians’ Heaven is located within the earth’s aura, directly above the earth and beneath the American pale faces’ “Devochan”38; that in this Heaven all genuinely “good” Indians find their happy hunting grounds restored to them in duplicate, with all the modern improvements added. In these Elysian shades the pale-face cannot enter to rob them of their homes, or possess their squaws or maidens, or spread among them the diseases and disasters of civilization and death. [It was my purpose, when I began this lecture, to have somewhat to say in relation to the discovery, early history and settlement of Puget Sound, the mighty inland sea which indents the western edge of Oregon’s first great subdivision, the progressive state of Washington. I also meant to pay extended attention to the early history of Oregon’s two younger daughters, the ambitious states of Montana and Idaho. But time presses and I must leave this part of my theme and hasten to consider the more vital, because ever-pressing present, with which we are all concerned, as much from necessity as from choice. But before we leave it let us pause to pay a passing tribute to the memory of our risen pioneers.] The swaying pines of the lands they39 loved, and left to us as a heritage, chant their eternal requiem. The mighty mountains wear white crowns of everlasting snow in their honor and the broad prairies adorn their lowly graves with regularly returning flowers as the seasons come and go. The iron horse wakes shrillest echoes now, where erst the bellowing of the belabored ox was heard. Steam and lightning have out-distanced time and conquered space in the years that have flown since they fell asleep. The echoes of the mountains and the rocks are answering back to new conditions {now}, and the sons and daughters of the pioneers are confronted by new problems of which they40 scarcely dreamed. These pioneers, in goodly numbers, found their way to Oregon early in the “forties” and “fifties”, making their way across the continent in the dim wake of Lewis and Clark. The four-wheeled ship of the desert was their vehicle and the rough-ribbed ox [was] their motive power.41 [I cannot linger here to tell you of the vicissitudes of their journeying; how] in peril often, in fatigue always, and sometimes in sickness, through death and deprivation42, they struggled onward toward the setting sun. But these early settlers found at length a country that well repaid them for their toil; a country of surpassing beauty and diversity of scenery, soil and climate; a country in which the giant minds that planned their exodus from older lands might have the ample room they needed to expand43 and grow. Upon reaching the territory of Oregon, they settled, often, in widely separated fields. For several years they lived in isolation, but also in health, peace and primitive plenty. They made friends with the Indians and, forming a provisional government [of their own], protected themselves and the red man alike within its statutes. But the discovery of gold, first in California, and a little later in Oregon, was the lever that worked a44 change in the provincial habits of these Spartan-souled heroes[, the end of which is not yet foreseen; and I sometimes wonder if we have hardly seen its beginning.] The whole world caught the gold fever.45 Men left their homes and families and flocked together to the new Eldorado like cormorants scenting the means of subsistence from afar. They settled California with a heterogeneous multitude from all the nations of the earth and gradually, as the contagion spread, extended their peregrinations /in/to Oregon, where nature had, in many places, been equally successful in storing up and hiding away her precious ores. [I cannot stop to tell you now about the many multi millionaires of the Pacific Coast who have risen from poverty to their present status during their sojourn beside the sunset seas. Nor can I stop to more than drop a word in recognition of the many more who became victims of hopes deferred and who, failing to acquire the Midas’ touch, grew weary of the struggle and retired to the seclusion and security of the country or returned to their childhood’s haunts, sadder, but not wiser nor richer than when they wandered away. Rather be it my province to point the way at this time for the many thousands of ambitious ones who were born too late to get a footing of their own upon the virgin soil of the older states, and are looking now for ideal homes in the Pacific Northwest–where there yet is room. Very many of our early settlers are tax-burdened with large tracts of the best and most fruitful lands, acquired when the settlements were sparse, which they are now ready to subdivide and sell, in small holdings and on easy terms, to actual settlers. These lands comprise every imaginable variety of soil, scenery and climate.] The entire region lying west of the Cascade mountains, within the “rain belt,” rejoices in two seasons, the wet and the dry. And yet, there is no drought in summer, nor is there any long-continued spell of rain at [any] one time in winter. The climate is mild throughout the year. Here is the home alike of the fruit and the grain, the forest and the mineral. If you fancy that you prefer to settle upon government lands there are yet many openings for such homes, where, by going from 20 to 100 miles away from present railroad facilities, thus following in a much modified form the heroic example of \the\ early pioneers, you may, by overcoming comparatively few of the obstacles they encountered, achieve a like or a greater success. Do you wish a climate with more marked extremes of heat and cold? The extensive table lands of the eastern portion of this great domain invite you to possess them. Here also, in many places, are the homes of the fruit and the grain. Here are mountain fortresses with intersecting valleys and limpid streams. Here, too, is the home of irrigation, the home of the stock grower and the stronghold of the baser metals, as well as of gold and silver and precious stones. While I do not believe in a one-sexed country, any more than a one-sexed home or government, I do believe that women should have equal chance with men to acquire the homes that both the sexes equally need, and must jointly occupy. The one great obstacle in the way of women getting homes in the country is their too frequent desire to possess lands of area so great that to live upon them means isolation. But, if women, as well as men, when in quest of homes, would be content with farms containing 5, 10, or at most 40 acres, bringing with them, to a new country, sufficient means to carry them through the first year or so of settlement–say, anywhere from $500 up–there are comparatively few of you who are often rack-rented in the great cities and over-strained in every way–/in/ trying to keep up appearances–who would not find yourselves and those dependent upon you very soon in independent circumstances. When you live in the country, on land of your own, you are free from the burdens of house rent, water tax, wood bills46, and milk, butter, eggs, fruit and vegetable bills.47 In your city garrets are old clothes enough to keep your families {comfortably} clad in the country till an income grows; and through the care-free lives you /may/ lead under such conditions your health grows firm.48 [When I look into the pale faces of the many care-weary women who wrestle daily with the ever increasing perplexities of the present complex system of city life–women whose boys and girls are growing toward maturity with no remunerative occupation in sight–my mind leaps out beyond the Rocky Mountains to the many favored localities that would gladly afford them homes, under conditions they could meet with reasonable effort if enough of families with only a few hundred dollars each, as a basis for getting a foothold, would so cooperate that they might be of mutual assistance to each other in the formation of new settlements. Such a change would necessitate frugality, industry and some self-denial. Their homes at first would be rude and simple, but cheap and comfortable. Their church, school-house and public hall would at first be held under the same roof and their stores, workshops and manufactories would be primitive, but amply sufficient to supply all their needs till the railroads could reach them.] Bear in mind that it is difficult at this late day to find room for large settlements, even in small holdings, directly along the established railroad lines. If you would grow up with a49 country you must <first> establish yourselves on its frontier. I have at this moment in mind, many places where deeded lands, held at reasonable prices, {offered} on easy terms, can be bought in the Pacific Northwest for just such homes. I also know of whole townships on the still farther frontier, where irrigation lends the magic of its power to such marvels of production as are never seen elsewhere. These lands are from 20 to 80 and even 100 miles away, at present, from railroads. But many thousands of acres are there awaiting possession, where many hundreds of ideal homes50 could be secured, contiguous to inexhaustible summer range for stock; where alfalfa yields prodigious returns from irrigation for winter’s feed for stock; where a farm of 40 acres or less would make an independent home. In these places chickens thrive like magic on sunflowers bigger than dinner plates. Hogs grow fat on barley, harvested by themselves, after having thriven to maturity on alfalfa, also of their own harvesting/s/. Small fruits, cereals and vegetables yield enormously. The air is as pure as ether and the scenery is as grand as Heaven. Here can be grown in inexhaustible quantities the sugar beet, the mangel wurzel, and all the other staples on which man and beast do thrive, except, perhaps, your Indian corn, for which the delicious air of night is too cool to permit its superabundant growth.51 Adjacent mines abound in all directions, awaiting the toil and money of man for their development. Again I think of evergreen forests, humid skies and fruit bearing vales, hard by the sunset seas. But many of these are also away from present lines of railroad, though not more than 20, 30, or at most 100 miles away. Think of it! Only 100 miles! Why, we of the Pacific Coast went 2,000 and 3,000 miles away from railroads to get our start! Oh, those primitive times! How, amid all these scenes of wonder, do I love to pause and live over again the far-off days when everybody in my great bailiwick knew everybody else; when there were no extremes of wealth or want, but everybody had enough and to spare. Families living hundreds of miles apart made annual visits to each other’s homes at convenient seasons, their vehicles the same battered, creaking ships of the desert, their teams the same old oxen, grown fat and festive, that, half-starved and footsore, had brought them across the continent in the bygone years.52 Anon the railroad era dawned upon the land. The shout of its coming was heard in the air, and songs like this floated out upon the breeze: From the land[s] of the distant East I come, A railway abroad, and I love to roam, In my lengthening, winding way, On my ballast of rock and my ribs of pine And my sinews of steel that glitter and shine, While my workmen sap and saw53 and mine, As steadily day by day, They tunnel the mountains and climb the ridges, And span the culverts and rivet the bridges, And waken the echoes afar and anear With the shout of triumph and song of cheer! The state of Oregon, or what is left of it since it married off its three territorial daughters, Washington, Montana and Idaho, to state governments, contains in round numbers, an area <of> 95,275 square miles. Washington, the eldest of Oregon’s “three stately Graces”, possesses an about54 equal area. Montana comes next, with skirts nearly as ample, and Idaho sits proudly at the eastward gates, holding aloft/, as shown on the maps,/ the rough similitude of a huge arm-chair on her mountains’ summits, inviting you to come and be seated. There is much mountainous country throughout the Pacific Northwest; so much that the pure air of Heaven, playing at random among the heights, frightens away the cyclones of the flats55 and sends them howling over the Kansas prairies and the great plains of Texas, leaving our rock-ribbed vales in smiling security. Tornadoes, drought, and pestilence, from the same cause, escape us. The trend of the main mountain ranges is north and south, with innumerable spurs reaching out in all directions, breaking the country into diversified valleys, well watered and fertile. Every cereal known to agriculture, every fruit and flower of the temperate zones and many products of semi-torrid climes find congenial homes in different portions of this broad domain. Every mineral known to man abounds within our borders. Our forests are gigantic and inexhaustible, our rivers are big and deep and rapid and our creeks and rills and lakes [and rivulets] no man can number. [I am not here as a real estate boomer, nor do I come to speculate. But I do come to say to the many earnest inquirers who are seeking homes, and who really desire to do their part toward making them, that in my country Nature has done her part to perfection.] But, don’t come to a new country wholly empty-handed, expecting the few who are on the ground ahead of you to furnish you with /remunerative/ employment. Come prepared to take care of yourselves till you can have time to raise a crop. Come prepared to help each other, just as did the early pioneers–just as all must do who leave the mark of success upon the age in which they struggle. “The world belongs to those who take it; Not to those who sit and wait.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_56_56" id="identifier_56_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An inspirational motto employed by Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932), fierce Quaker abolitionist and reformer who came to be known as “America’s Joan of Arc,” when signing her name (Gallman 55; J. Young; Campbell, “Anna E. Dickinson”). This was not an unusual practice; Scott Duniway often closed her letters with “Yours for Liberty.”">56 Once, when I was 20 years younger than now, though not a whit less enthusiastic, as I was journeying westward across the continent by rail, I perpetrated some stanzas with which to please my friends at home<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cthe-pacific-northwest%e2%80%9d-june-1-1893/#footnote_57_56" id="identifier_57_56" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The following poem was written in the summer of 1872. It was published as “Oregon: Land of Promise” in 1876, and was included, as “West and West,” in David and Anna Matson that same year (172-79). The latter indicates that it was composed in Portland on July 25.">57, and also58 [by special request of several members of the World’s Fair Board of Lady Managers,] I will conclude59: Ho! for the bracing and breezy Pacific, As surging and heaving he rolleth for aye; Ho for the land where bold rocks bid us welcome, And grandeur and beauty hold rivaling sway! Yes, ho for the West, for the blest land of promise, Where mountains all white bathe their brows in the sky, While down their steep sides the wild60 torrents come61 dashing, And eagles scream out from their eyries on high! I have seen the bright East where the restless Atlantic Forever and ever wails out his deep moan, And I’ve stood in the shade of the dark Alleghenies, Or listened, all rapt, to Niagara’s groan. Again, I have sailed through grand scenes on the Hudson, Steamed down the Fall River, through Long Island Sound; The Ohio I’ve viewed, and the weird Susquehanna, Or skirted the Lake Shores62 when West I was bound. I’ve sniffed the bland breeze of the broad Mississippi, And dreamed in the midst of his valley so great; Have crossed and recrossed the bold turbid Missouri, As he bears toward the Gulf Stream his steam-guided freight; And I’ve bathed my hot forehead in soft limpid moonbeams, That shimmered me o’er with their glow and their gold, In the haunts where the loved of my youth gave glad welcome, And memory recalled each dear voice, as of old. But though scenes such as these oft allured, pleased and charmed me, Euterpe63 came not64 with her harp or my lyre; Yet when I again reached thy prairies, Nebraska, To sing she began me at once to inspire. And, as westward we sped, o’er the broad rolling pampas, Or slowly ascended the mountains all wild, Or dashed through the gorges and under the snowsheds, The Nine with crude numbers my senses65 beguiled. Colorado’s wild steeps and the rocks of Wyoming, Their lone stunted pine trees and steep palisades, And afar to the West the cold bleak Rocky Mountains, At whose feet the wild buffalo feeds in the glades, Have each in their turn burst sublime on my vision, While deserts all desolate gazed at the sky, And away to the south rose the snow-crested Wasatch, Bald, bleak and majestic, broad rolling and high. I have stood where dead cities of sandstone columnar, Loom[ed] up in their grandeur, all solemn and still, And mused o’er the elements’ wars of the Ages That shaped them in symmetry wild at their will. I have rolled down the boulders and waked the weird echoes, Where serpents affrighted, have writhed in their rage, And watched the fleet antelope bound o’er the desert Through vast beds of cacti66 and greasewood and sage. I have sailed on the breast of the deseret Dead Sea, And bathed in its waters all tranquil and clear, Have gazed on the mountains and valleys of Humboldt, Strange, primitive, awful, sad, silent and sere. I have climbed and reclimbed the steep, wind-worn Sierras, Peered in their deep gulches67 all dark and obscure, Dreamed under the shadows of giant sequoias, Or talked with wild Indians, reserved and demure. I have trusted my bark on the billows of ocean, And watched them roll up and recede from the shore, And have anchored within the68 fine bay San Francisco, Where the Golden Gate husheth the Ocean’s deep roar. But not till I reached thy broad bosom, Columbia, Where ever, forever, thou roll’st to the sea, Did I feel that I’d found the full acme of grandeur, Where song could run riot, or fancy go free. Then my Pegasus changed his quick pen to a gallop, Euterpe’s wind harp waked Aeolian strains, And the Nine in their rapture sang odes to the mountains That preside over Oregon’s forests and plains. Hoary Hood called aloud to the three virgin sisters Who blushed with the roseate glow of the morn; St. Helen and Rainier from over the border Scowled and clouded their brows in pretension of scorn. The Dalles of Columbia set up on their edges, Swirled through the deep gorges as onward they rolled, Or over huge boulders of basalt went dashing, Dispersed into spray ere their story was told. To the North and the South and the West rose the fir trees, With proportions colossal and graceful and tall, Dark green in their hue with a tinge of deep purple, Casting shadows sometimes o’er the earth like a pall. Bold headlands keep guard o’er the Oregon river Whose dashings are heard far away o’er the main, While69 roaring and foaming and rushing forever, He struggles with Ocean some ‘vantage to gain, White cities sit smiling beside the Columbia, Where, though land-walled the breeze of the sea she inhales, While wind-worn Umatilla and gale-torn Wallula Keep sentinel watch o’er her broad eastern vales. Then ho for the bracing and breezy Pacific, Whose waves lave the Occident ever and aye! I care naught for the grandeur of Asia and Europe For my far western home greets me gladly today. Yes, ho for the West! for the blest land of promise, Where mountains all green bathe their brows in the sky; While down the tall snow peaks wild torrents come dashing And eagles scream out from their eyries on high! NOTES A world’s fair, opening January 22, 1893, held in celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage, attended by more than 21.4 million visitors. A series of congresses were convened under the auspices of the woman’s branch of the World’s Congress Auxiliary, including a Women’s Congress and a Suffrage Congress, over a six-month period (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 217). The best documented of these was the first, the World’s Congress of Representative Women of All Lands, held May 15-21, in which 528 delegates representing 27 countries and 126 organizations participated. Described as “the greatest assemblage of women which ever had been held, ” its published proceedings ran to nearly one thousand pages (Sewall), and it was remarked in History of Woman Suffrage (4: 609-10). Some women spoke at more than one congress; for example, Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper gave thirty-six addresses during the course of the exposition (Eagle 296). Also, the label “Congress of Women” seems to have been adopted generically to refer to all. Thus, pinpointing the congress at which Scott Duniway delivered this address is difficult. Her dating of her speech rules out the Congress of Representative Women, and she appears nowhere in its proceedings. Her speech is excerpted in a second publication (Eagle). Only sixteen women (out of hundreds) are reported in both publications, and in fewer than half of these cases are similar speeches reproduced, so the latter appears to be a wider-ranging compendium of selected speeches from the different congresses. For one discussion of this theme in discourses about Native Americans, see Lake, “Between” 125-29. Scott Duniway’s views on Indian affairs were typical for her day. In 1877, the New Northwest, reporting Nez Perce attacks on settlers at Mount Idaho, commented that the natives had reverted to their “savage instincts” despite the government’s “peace policy,” and opined that General Howard’s only failure was to have sufficient troops (29 June). The next year recounting more native atrocities, it preached: “Shame upon a government that treats with creatures beside whom coyotes are fairies and hyenas angels. Let us think of something else, or we’ll be tempted to shoulder a hatchet and embark for the border, to prove that armed women can fight, whether they’re allowed to be voters or not” (8 Aug. 1878). In 1881, a front-page column editorialized that Indians should fend for themselves rather than be given everything for free by the government (9 June). Indeed, the exposition itself heralded this discovery, and intentionally so. Anthony was determined that the experience of the 1876 Centennial, at which women were excluded, not be repeated and that woman’s rights be a highly visible subject of the fair. Her personal lobbying in Washington, particularly among the wives of Senators, Congressmen, and cabinet members, was largely responsible for the provision of a Board of Lady Managers. Socialite Bertha Honoré Palmer and the other managers then placed women’s achievements before the public eye, not only in a magnificent Woman’s Building, with a five-thousand-seat auditorium and marble busts of Lucretia Coffin Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony eying the proceedings, but in virtually every state building at the fair. Anthony and Lucy Stone spoke often and drew large crowds. Anthony and Frances Willard announced the formation of something called the Anti-Saloon League. All this activity caused one young (male) observer to lament that “this World’s Fair has positively set afire the suffragists” (Holbrook 212-13; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 232-33). What worried the men cheered the women. In an open letter announcing the reinvigoration of O.S.W.S.A. (which had been moribund following the demise of the New Northwest and Abigail’s Idaho diversions), published in the Oregonian (July 5, 1894), Scott Duniway (a vice-president of N.A.W.S.A.* at the time) and two others wrote: “The world’s Columbian exposition gave a wonderful impetus to the equal suffrage movement, by bringing together the leading women of every state and nation, holding a continuous woman’s congress for a period of six months. The congress was of itself the first sign of official recognition, by our government and by the world, of the great feminine but hitherto forgotten equation in governmental quantities. Through it the women of all nations and all regions came for the first time into personal contact. They came together, not through the accident of birth, nor because of any lucky alliance with prominent or fortunate men, but because of their own inherent ability and self-hood. The congress discussed all sorts of subjects, including religion and politics, agnosticism and orthodoxy; social purity, education and morality; temperance and sanitation, culinary lore and occult phenomena. Science and invention, literature, philanthropy, poesy, progress and prosperity–everything in which humanity holds common interest, received attention in its turn. Corporations, copartnerships, monetary science, co-operative housekeeping, agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, and, above all, baby culture, received due consideration. In every phase of these deliberations the necessity for woman’s enfranchisement was self evident. Every address made, every thought invoked involving any philanthropic or financial consideration whatsoever; every enlightened impulse and every awakening aspiration cast an unerring search light into woman’s past history, and aroused new protest against her present status as a political, financial, conjugal and domestic nonentity. The discussions increased in spirit as the congress proceeded, and soon the demand for woman’s enfranchisement became fashionable” (Mss 432B 16: 162, OR Hist. Soc.). [*National American Woman Suffrage Association, which resulted from the merger in 1890 of the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations.] Morison 3: 112. “Woman Suffrage and the Republican Party.” Recall Scott Duniway’s frequent appeal to western exceptionalism, the notion that principles of liberty and equality uniquely flourish in the “chivalrous” west (About Scott Duniway). Eagle 90-96. “Where Rolls the Oregon,” a phrase she uses often, is the title of a poem by Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (164-65). (1475-1519): Spanish conquistador and explorer; head of first stable European settlement in South America, 1511; first European to view Pacific Ocean, September, 1513. Martín Fernández de Enciso. For the story to which Scott Duniway alludes, see “Vasco Núñez de Balboa.” Hernán Cortés, Marqués Del Valle de Oaxaca (1485-1547): conquistador who overthrew the Aztecs, 1519-21, and won Mexico for Spanish crown. Both manuscript and typescript originally read as presented here; the typescript subsequently was hand-edited to read “The excitement in which Balboa became a leading factor”. There were 11 Aztec emperors, most of whom were not named Montezuma, including two who succeeded Montezuma II, the emperor who confronted Cortés. Pedro Arias de Avila (a.k.a. Pedrarias Davila) (1440?-1530): from Segovia, Spain; soldier, knight and colonial administrator; married intimate friend of Queen Isabella; commanded largest Spanish expedition to New World, and first to found permanent colonies, including Panama, 1514, and Nicaragua, 1522; responsible for judicial murder of Balboa; founded Panama City, 1519; original party to agreement leading to discovery of Peru, but withdrew, 1526; superseded as Governor of Panama and retired to Leon, Nicaragua, 1526; remembered as cruel, unscrupulous man of bad character (“Pedro Arias de Avila“). Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521): Portugese navigator and explorer who sailed under both Portugese and Spanish flags, sailed around South America–discovering Straits of Magellan–and across the Pacific, killed in the Philippines, his expedition continued to Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Scott Duniway’s history appears faulty. Fortún Jiménez led a mutiny against a ship, commanded by Diego Becerra, which had been sent for westward exploration by Cortés in 1553; Jiménez sailed to a bay, which he named La Paz, which he thought was an island but which was the peninsula of Baja California; Jimenéz was killed in a skirmish with Indians on the mainland (Caughey 45). (c. 1540-1596): English admiral who circumnavigated the globe, 1577-80; helped defeat Spanish Armada, 1588; most renowned seaman of Elizabethan Age. The typescript corrected the grammar of the manuscript, which reads “unquestioningly”. Bruno Heceta: Spanish explorer (Corning 111). (1800-1854). The work referred to probably is: The history of Oregon and California: and the other territories of the North-West coast of North America, accompanied by a geographical view and map of those countries, and a number of documents as proofs and illustrations of the history. Boston: Little, 1844. (1755-1806): born Rhode Island; first to circumnavigate globe under U.S. flag, in sloop Lady Washington, 1787-90; on second voyage, in Columbia, 1791-93, discovered Columbia River, May 11, 1792, giving foundation to U.S. claims of title to region (Corning 103; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 127). George Vancouver (1757-1798): English navigator; served under Captain James Cook; meticulously surveyed Pacific Coast from present-day San Francisco to British Columbia, 1791-95, but overlooked mouth of Columbia River and Grays Harbor (Corning 254; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 127). Frances Auretta Fuller Barritt Victor (1826-1902): born Rome, New York; came to Oregon with husband H. C. Victor, 1863; author of poems and short stories who became accomplished regional historian; authored The River of the West, 1870, All Over Oregon and Washington, 1872, The New Penelope, 1877, Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist about Oregon and Washington, 1891, Early Indian Wars of Oregon, 1893; at least four volumes of Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Pacific States, including History of Oregon, are largely her work (Walker; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 350-51; Powers 305-16). Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist About Oregon and Washington. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1891. Bertha Honoré Palmer (1849-1918): queen of Chicago society; musician, linguist, writer, philanthropist, art collector; born and raised Louisville, Kentucky; married financial giant Potter Palmer (owner of celebrated Palmer House hotel), 1871; president, Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893; regular at Jane Addam’s Hull House; supporter of Women’s Trade Union League; mildly supportive of woman suffrage but strongly opposed to militancy; retired to Sarasota, Florida, where her property “The Oaks” became bay-front community for rich and famous, and her farm “Meadowcrest Pastures” became Myakka River State Park (I. Ross, “Palmer”; Patricia Chadwick, “Historical Biography: Bertha Honore Palmer”). Says Ishbel Ross: “The World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 gave Bertha Honoré Palmer her most spectacular opportunity for civic and social leadership and brought to a triumphant culmination her career as ‘the Mrs. Astor of the Middle West.’ As chairman of the exposition’s Board of Lady Managers she made the Woman’s Building one of the exposition’s most memorable achievements by seeing to it that the exhibits from forty-seven nations–many secured through her personal approaches to government leaders and European royalty–illuminated women’s emergence as a social and economic force and created sympathy for the handicaps under which they still labored” (I. Ross, “Palmer” 9). Isabella I (1451-1504): queen of Castile (1474-1504) and of Aragon (1479-1504), ruling the two kingdoms jointly from 1479 with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon (Ferdinand V of Castile), and effecting the permanent union of Spain. Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809): soldier; President Jefferson’s private secretary, 1801; appointed by Jefferson to lead first overland journey of exploration to Pacific, 1803, the journey taking more than two years, 1804-06; governor, Louisiana, 1806-09 (Corning 146). William Clark (1770-1838): soldier and friend of Meriwether Lewis’ in army; co-leader of overland “Expedition of Discovery” to Pacific, 1804-06; governor, Missouri Territory, 1813-21; Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1822-38 (Corning 55). For a recent popular account of the Expedition of Discovery, see Ambrose. Although no woman departed St. Louis, of course, one woman later would play a role as translator: Sacagawea, wife of the French trader Charbonneau, who joined the expedition at Fort Mandan in November, 1804. In light of subsequent events, Sacagawea’s absence from Scott Duniway’s narrative is noteworthy. It could be understood as reflecting the institutionalized racism of her day. It also reflects the fact that Sacagawea was not embraced as a historically significant American heroine until 1902, with the publication of Eva Emery Dye’s popular historical novel, The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark. Certainly, Abigail’s tune would change dramatically about a decade later (see “The Pioneer Mother“). William J. McConnell (1839-1925): born Commerce, Michigan; went to California, 1860, Oregon, 1862 (where taught school), and walked to Boise City, Idaho, 1863; while a vegetable farmer in October, 1864, the victim of a gang of horse thieves, which he and others apprehended, killing three, wounding a fourth, and later capturing, extracting a confession, and shooting the leader; afterward offered his services and the Payette Vigilance Committee, or Committee of Safety, was born; married Louisa Brown, 1866; deputy U.S. Marshal, 1865-67; businessman, Humboldt County, California, 1867-72, when returned to Oregon; president, state senate, 1882; moved to Idaho as merchant, banker; member, Idaho Constitutional Convention, 1890; one of three Senators elected by Idaho legislature, 1890, the result of “political chicanery” between factions within the Republican Party (he received a shortened term by virtue of drawing the short straw among the three); Governor, 1893-96; U.S. Indian Inspector, 1897-1901; immigrant inspector, 1909–? (Beal and Wells 2: 72-75, 82-84, 343; Bancroft, History of Washington 457; F. Peterson 160; Who was Who 803). Willis Sweet (1856-1925): attorney; born Alburg Springs, Vermont; attended common schools and University of Nebraska, Lincoln; printer by trade; moved to Moscow, Idaho, 1881; appointed U.S. Attorney, 1988; admitted to bar, 1889; associate justice, Idaho Supreme Court, 1889; first president, Board of Regents, University of Idaho, 1889-93; three terms in U.S. House, 1890-95; also embroiled in political chicanery of the time, on opposite sides from McConnell within Republican Party; unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate, 1896; resumed law practice, Coeur d’Alene; attorney general, Puerto Rico, 1903-05; edited newspaper in San Juan, Puerto Rico, from 1913 until death (Bancroft, History of Washington 583; Beal and Wells 2: 73; “Sweet, Willis”). Gilbert, Frank T. Historic Sketches of Walla Walla, Whitman, Columbia and Garfield Counties, Washington Territory. Portland: Walling, 1882. Typescript: “says” Typescript: “their” Congress: “indeed” Cf. Gilbert: “Could this chief have looked forward fifty years, with the eye of divination, and beheld his successor Peo-peo-mux-mux, when a prisoner, murdered on the banks of that same stream by members of the race to which his guests belonged, it would have been a grave that he would have shown them, instead of an open hand of friendship and charity” (40). Further details concerning Yellept and his relationship with the expedition can be found in Ambrose (303-04, 358-59). Devachan. In theosophical systems, usually incorporating aspects of Buddhism and Brahamanism, the state of consciousness into which the Ego goes upon the death of the body. Congress: “the pioneers” Congress: “their parents” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to read: “Clark, with the four-wheeled ship of the desert as their vehicle and the rough-ribbed ox as their motive power.” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to read: “always, sometimes in sickness, and again through death and deprivation”. The Congress version reads: “always, and sometimes through sickness, death and deprivation”. Congress: “extend” Typescript and Congress: “the” Congress: “By the beginning of the year 1850 the whole world had caught the gold fever.” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently, substituting “fuel tax” The Congress version of this sentence ends: “you are free from the exactions of house rent, water tax, and the constantly accruing wood, milk, butter, eggs, fruit and vegetable bills that make your lives a burden.” Congress substitutes “your broken health returns.” Typescript and Congress: “the” Congress: “home sites” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to substitute “the superabundant yield of the Middle West” Congress divides this sentence in two; the second begins “Their vehicles were” Congress: “sow” Congress: “about an” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to read “of flats areas” An inspirational motto employed by Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932), fierce Quaker abolitionist and reformer who came to be known as “America’s Joan of Arc,” when signing her name (Gallman 55; J. Young; Campbell, “Anna E. Dickinson”). This was not an unusual practice; Scott Duniway often closed her letters with “Yours for Liberty.” The following poem was written in the summer of 1872. It was published as “Oregon: Land of Promise” in 1876, and was included, as “West and West,” in David and Anna Matson that same year (172-79). The latter indicates that it was composed in Portland on July 25. The typescript and Congress substitute “now” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to add “this address by their repetition within these walls”. Congress adds “the address by their recital here” Typescript and Congress: “cold” Congress: “torrent comes” Congress: “Shore” In Greek mythology, the Muse of music and lyric poetry Typescript and Congress: “out” Typescript: “scenes” The typescript was hand-edited subsequently to substitute “cactus” Congress: “gorges” Congress: “thy” The typescript and Congress substitute “As”
“WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY” – circa 1892
The following speech, the primary purpose of which was to rally Republican support for women’s voting rights, was delivered to a number of equal suffrage societies during the 1892 Presidential election campaign. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison once observed: “In 1890 American politics lost their equilibrium and began to pitch and toss in an effort to […]
The following speech, the primary purpose of which was to rally Republican support for women’s voting rights, was delivered to a number of equal suffrage societies during the 1892 Presidential election campaign. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison once observed: “In 1890 American politics lost their equilibrium and began to pitch and toss in an effort to reach stability among wild currents of protest that issued from the caverns of discontent.”1 For two decades, factory workers had been organizing in groups like the Knights of Labor and, later, Samuel Gompers’ American Federation of Labor, and striking for decent working conditions. But their gains were sporadic and their struggle against wealthy, often well-armed, capitalists and an unsympathetic judiciary given to ruling against labor on Spencerian, social darwinist grounds remained bitter and intractable. Meanwhile, as Kansan Mary Elizabeth Clyens Lease exhorted them to “raise less corn and more hell,” destitute farmers, victims of both drought and monopolists, turned their fraternal and economic alliances to politics and revolt. In 1892, these forces gave birth to the People’s, or Populist, Party, whose platform demanded reforms including: free and unlimited coinage of silver; government ownership of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; a graduated income tax; an eight-hour work day; popular election of U.S. Senators; and initiative and referendum. Thus, while the principals in the 1892 Presidential election were Republican Benjamin Harrison and Democrat Grover Cleveland, the contest also featured two minor party candidates: General John Bidwell of California, of the Prohibition Party; and General James B. Weaver, a former Greenbacker from Iowa, of the new Populist Party.2 Scott Duniway approached this election with mixed emotions. On one hand, her antipathy toward the Prohibitionists reinforced a general suspicion of third parties. Six years before, she had blamed Cleveland’s 1884 victory on “the reflex action of the Prohibition fiasco . . . by which the party of the first part could easily be beaten at the ballot-boxes but for the stop-thief cry of Prohibitionists, who manage to decoy enough of the blinded but honest voting element from the [Republican] candidate who eschews fanaticism to elect the Rummy every time.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_3_54" id="identifier_3_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="New Northwest 12 Aug. 1886. Her claim (repeated here) was not unfounded: The 25,000 votes received by Prohibition Party candidate John P. St. John in New York may have cost the Republicans the state and thereby the election (Robert C. Kennedy, “Cold Water Comfort”).">3 On the other hand, although born and raised in Tazewell County, Illinois, and an ardent admirer of Abraham Lincoln, she was not a complacent Republican. Her anti-slavery commitments made the “Democratic Party of the South,” as she liked to call it, forever anathema. But she believed that the Republican Party had betrayed not just women but also farmers and laborers, and was seriously attracted to Populism (as she had been to Greenback ideas fifteen years earlier). Certainly she espoused a variety of communitarian and joint-ownership ideas that were quite socialistic and at odds with the prevailing faith in laissez-faire economic principles.4 In the same year in which she wrote this address (also the year of the great Homestead strike against the Carnegie Steel Company), she confided to her son, Clyde, that the Republican Party was “dead” because it had lost its “moral purpose” and had sold out to the “almighty dollar.” “I do believe,” she wrote, “the Populists will eliminate enough of their crudities to make of this new party a moral force, so divested of cant and trickery that the rank and file of the Republican masses can become allied to it.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_5_54" id="identifier_5_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Qtd. in Moynihan, Rebel 197. Cleveland was to be returned to the Presidency with more than 5.5 million votes to Harrison’s almost 5.2 million. Cleveland, who carried seven Northern states and the solid South, had a heavy electoral majority. However, Weaver polled more than a million votes and carried four states. Even Bidwell received more total votes–over 270,000–than any Prohibition candidate, before or since.">5 Perhaps only her aversion to third parties stopped her from joining.6 In any event, while often critical, Scott Duniway never gave up on the party of Lincoln. In this speech, she challenges the Republican Party to live up to its roots. She positions equal suffrage in the tradition of abolition and hallowed Republican principles of liberty. She also addresses more pragmatic political concerns. First, she argues that women have been loyal to the Republican Party, supporting the Union’s war effort during the “Great Rebellion,” biding their time during the “Negroes’ hour” of emancipation and enfranchisement, and helping overcome Horace Greeley’s defection in 1872. Thus, she concludes, women have earned the party’s strong support in the cause of equal suffrage. Second, she warns of the growing influence of the “foreign” vote7 and suggests that Republicans must court women to preserve their power. Third, echoing her third-party fears, she repeats her views on the political dangers of a suffrage-prohibition alliance and argues that Republican support of equal suffrage would leave the Prohibition Party dying on the vine. Just as noteworthy as these overt appeals is an almost palpable undercurrent: Scott Duniway’s fervent wish to be kept from political temptation by a Republican Party worthy of her support.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_8_54" id="identifier_8_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Three years later, in response to a comment by a populist that he was “ashamed” of the party for “dodging” the suffrage question at its convention, “Mrs. Duniway replied that self-preservation is the first law of nature; that the populist craft had as much as it could do, in its present stage of progress, to carry the driftwood of the voting contingent which was beached by the older parties and always attached itself to new political movements. She said it was the duty of the republican party to lead the suffrage movement, because it was strong enough to carry it without peril” (Pacific Empire 14 May 1896).">8 The text is taken from a hand-edited typescript in Scrapbook #2 of the Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. With the gradual approach of another important national campaign, in which not only the two great leading political parties are to play a prominent part, wherein one or the other must be the loser, while at least two newer and lesser parties will be in the field with their divergent demands for the people’s franchises, there comes a time when the Republican party must bestir itself with renewed activity along some line of progress, to which it has hitherto been too often cravenly and selfishly oblivious, or it will surely meet the defeat it invites by its procrastination. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the merits or demerits of the many temporary political uprisings of the people upon partisan bases, with all of whose movements the true philanthropist must have much interest, in some, if not many directions. But it is well to call the attention of statesmen who have grown rich and prominent in the service of the Republican party, to which the writer is by nature as loyal as they, to the partially unwritten history of this party’s younger and more vigorous years, when its leaders were not afraid to openly avow their loyalty to the fundamental principles of a Republican form of government so aptly defined by Abraham Lincoln, when he termed it “A government of the people, for the people and by the people” that no new definition is necessary. The active politician of a couple of decades gone, who is as earnestly engaged today in manipulating the partisan machine as he was in his younger days, has no need to be reminded that the summer of 1872 was a period of great uncertainty for the Republican party. An extremely doubtful campaign was before it, in which great complications had arisen to disturb and perplex its leaders. Horace Greeley<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_9_54" id="identifier_9_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1872): journalist, politician; founded widely-read New York Tribune, 1841; served briefly in U.S. House of Representatives, 1848-49, thereafter failing several attempts at election to Congress; abolitionist; free soil sympathizer; prominent Republican who bucked public opinion by opposing Lincoln’s renomination, 1864, and signing bail bond for jailed former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, 1867; nominated for President by anti-Grant Republicans, and endorsed by Democrats, 1872, but lost conclusively (Nevins; Ashley, 1690-1872 256-72).">9 had virtually gone over to the Democratic party, taking with him, for a time, a third part of the loyal voters of the nation who had acquired the habit of yielding unquestioned obedience to the behests of the renowned editor, and who found themselves allied by political wedlock to the Lost Cause before they were fully aware of their predicament. Not so the loyal equal-rights women of the North, who had been the valued allies of Mr. Lincoln during all the stormy years of the war, and who naturally desired to perpetuate the principles of Liberty, to whose cause they had given their fathers in council and their husbands and sons in battle.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_10_54" id="identifier_10_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Fed up with corruption in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, who had been elected in 1868, anti-Grant Republicans formed the short-lived Liberal Republican Party and nominated Greeley. The Democrats did not nominate their own candidate, instead endorsing Greeley (“United States presidential election, 1872“). Suffragists, who had reason to hope that he would embrace their cause, were bitterly disillusioned upon learning that Greeley’s liberality did not extend to women’s enfranchisement. None was more disillusioned than Scott Duniway, who had been an avid and regular reader of the Tribune since the age of 14 (Moynihan, Rebel 10). Abigail held her nose and supported Grant’s re-election (Bandow 62-64). This also was the election in which radical Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran on the Equal Rights ticket (ostensibly with abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass as her running mate, although he never consented to do so). Scott Duniway strongly disapproved of Claflin Woodhull (“San Francisco County Woman Suffrage Association” n. 13; “Eminent Women I Have Met” n. 29).">10 During the entire period of the Great Rebellion the patriotic mothers, wives, daughters and sweethearts of the American soldiers refrained from holding woman suffrage conventions. They accepted the “Negroes’ hour” with unselfish disregard of their own disenfranchisement, and cheerfully performed the work of the farm, the fireside, the hospital and the sanitary commission, even though almost every home was thrown into mourning for its patriotic dead. Whatever any woman could do, notwithstanding she had perilled her life in her younger years to give existence to its soldiery, was eagerly done in her maturer state to mitigate the horrors of a war that women though doubly taxed to support it, had not been permitted to forestall. Then, when the protracted conflict was over and the Negro came to the front as an enfranchised citizen; while yet the mother hearts of the nation were torn and bleeding from the reflex wounds of battlefields and prison pens, these loyal women again came to the front, asking for the full and complete recognition of their own equality with the colored man. They came confidently, believing they had, through bereavement and loyalty, honestly earned their right to the same law making power that had been conferred upon the colored man without the asking; but alas, for the glory of the Republican party! their loyalty was repulsed and their patriotism insulted. Anna Ella Carroll<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_11_54" id="identifier_11_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1893): political pamphleteer for the anti-foreign, anti-Catholic “Know-Nothing” party of the mid-1850s, later for the Union as a border stater who opposed abolition. A purported military strategist, she claimed to have authored the plan to invade the Confederacy via the Tennessee, rather than the Mississippi, river valley and attempted for 14 years to obtain payment from Congress (Boyer). Her claim was highly dubious but Scott Duniway here repeats the sympathetic interpretation widely argued and publicized in the 1880s by suffragists, who portrayed her as a victim of male injustice.">11 who had freely furnished Abraham Lincoln with her plan–and the only accepted and practicable one–for the Tennessee campaign; and who had unselfishly loaned the United States government her entire fortune to carry it forward to victory; Mary A. Livermore<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_12_54" id="identifier_12_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim).">12, whose work for the sanitary commission won for her and womankind the lasting gratitude of every sick and wounded soldier; Clara Barton<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_13_54" id="identifier_13_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for 23 years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62).">13, to whose philanthropic zeal the nation is so deeply indebted that nothing but woman’s complete enfranchisement can ever discharge its obligations, and Julia Ward Howe<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_14_54" id="identifier_14_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim).">14, whose “Battle Hymn of the Republic” will stir the patriotic pulse of nations yet unborn–these are types of the many women who came, and alas for Liberty! are still coming to the front, knocking for their admittance to the rights, emoluments and privileges of a government which treats them as aliens in times of peace, though glad to recognize them as allies in times of peril. The Republican party, when confronted with its great dilemma in 1872, finding its supremacy imperilled, quite naturally remembered “the loyal women of America,” and proclaimed through its national platform in that memorable year that “their demands for additional rights” were entitled to “respectful consideration.” Although this “plank” in the platform was rejected by many women as a “splinter” quite too slender to support a principle, the majority accepted it as the best and only concession the party was in a position to make to any constituency, however large, which when comprised only of prospective voters, had no present power to speak effectively in its behalf at the ballot box. This majority made such excellent use of the proferred “splinter” that it surprised Mr. Greeley into the admission to some of his closest lady friends, at the close of his unfortunate candidacy, that his most effective opponents during the contest had been found among the woman suffragists. A few days after the disaffected Republicans had met in Cincinnati and nominated Mr. Greeley, the National Woman Suffrage Association held a convention in New York at Steinway Hall, Elizabeth Cady Stanton<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_15_54" id="identifier_15_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and The Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”).">15 presiding. The great editor had a few pronounced friends at the convention, whom Miss Anthony<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_16_54" id="identifier_16_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-1850; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31).">16, with her usual diplomacy, contrived to enlist in a mission of great importance to Mr. Greeley and ourselves. A committee was formed, at her instigation, of which the present writer was made chairman, with instructions to interview the great editor and learn from his own expression, just what help we might expect from him, if elected president, in securing our own enfranchisement. We found the famous editor in his sanctum surrounded by his subalterns, all bristling, like himself, with hostility to the woman suffrage cause. Mr. Greeley gravely asserted, among other absurdities, that he didn’t “want women to be men”! And when we assured him that “ballots couldn’t change the sex of anybody,” he replied curtly, “Go tell your convention that when the time comes that there is no prospect that the help of Horace Greeley can do them any good they can have it.” The result is too well known to require repetition.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_17_54" id="identifier_17_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Following a bitter campaign, Grant was re-elected. Greeley polled more than forty percent of the popular vote; he died before the electoral college met, and his eighty-six electoral votes were distributed among four minor candidates (“Horace Greeley“). Grant was to confirm the Liberal Republicans’ worst fears (and embarrass those Republicans, including suffragists, who had remained loyal) when the notorious Whiskey Ring scandal, in which distillers bribed government officials in order to avoid taxes, was exposed three years later, in 1875 (“Whiskey Ring“).">17 But the important part played by women in securing the defeat of Mr. Greeley, who, especially after being championed by the Democratic party at Philadelphia, (a few days after the woman suffrage convention in New York) considered himself invincible, was too lightly heeded by the Republican party for its own subsequent good; since all well informed women know that the tribulations which beset it in 1876 were the result of woman’s apathy and opposition during the Hayes-Tilden Campaign.18 Their enthusiasm, which had subsided into apathy after the Republican victory of 1872, for the good reason that it had brought them no redress of political grievances as had been promised, was reduced to frigidity when the Republican party was again in need of votes; and with remarkable unanimity they resolved to make no effort to assist in the canvass for Hayes and Wheeler. The party in which they had trusted had “been unmindful of its pledges to the loyal women of America.” It had placed the Negro man upon a political level with the Scandinavian; the Italian was recognized the equal of the Finlander; the Irishman as the peer of the German; the Englishman as the compeer of the Frenchman and the American as the co-equal of every thing masculine. But they, “the loyal women of America” were remanded to the political companionship of infants, idiots, insane persons, criminals, Chinamen and Jefferson Davis19, – a certain well remembered agitator whom the government afterwards punished for high treason by consigning him to the political equality of women, a condition under which he was humiliated during the remainder of his remarkable career; being the governmental peer of Mary A. Logan<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_20_54" id="identifier_20_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Simmerson Cunningham Logan (1838-1923): political wife and writer; married General John Alexander Logan, Republican politician and Army officer, 1855; freed slave given by her family as wedding gift; tutored by Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas in social politics, 1858; during Civil War, accompanied Logan in the field, mustering supplies and recruiting nurses for hospitals; nationally renowned creator, “Striped Hospital of the Thirty-first Regiment”; inventor of Memorial Day, to honor Union heroes; closely associated with Woman’s Relief Corps, auxiliary to Grand Army of the Republic, and with Clara Barton and American Red Cross; Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1890; after husband’s death, 1886, turned to writing in magazines and books, including The Part Taken by Women in American History, 1912 (Louise Young; Leah Sheffer, “Mary Logan: A Distinguished American Woman”).">20, Mother Bickerdyke<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_21_54" id="identifier_21_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke (1817-1901): Civil War hospital worker and spokesperson for Sanitary Commission; born near Mount Vernon, Ohio; helped establish hospitals in Memphis, nursed the wounded of battles of Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Chattanooga; accompanied Sherman on his “March to the Sea”, attending to some 13,000 wounded; later moved to San Francisco, volunteered with Salvation Army and other benevolent organizations; helped organize California branch of Woman’s Relief Corp (auxiliary of Grand Army of the Republic) (G. Adams; Willard and Livermore 1: 81-82).">21, and Harriet Beecher Stowe<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_22_54" id="identifier_22_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe”).">22! Colonel Thomas H. Benton<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_23_54" id="identifier_23_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858): lawyer, journalist and politician; served in War of 1812; editor of (St. Louis) Missouri Enquirer, 1818-20; U.S. Senate, 1821-25; nicknamed “Old Bullion” for opposing the national bank and championing “hard money”; moderate on slavery; a loyal Democrat, opposed his own son-in-law, John C Frémont, Republican candidate for the presidency in 1886; grand-uncle of painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) (Corning 27; “Thomas Hart Benton Biography”).">23, in his reliable “Thirty Years’ View”24 asserted that the election of William Henry Harrison<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_25_54" id="identifier_25_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1773-1841): soldier; Indian fighter who battled Tecumseh’s rebels in battle of Tippecanoe, 1811; Congressman, 1817-19, and Senator, 1825-28, from Ohio; elected ninth President (as a Whig), running with John Tyler, on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.”">25 to the Presidency in 1840 was largely due to the influence of women, who came into active participation in political contests for the first time during the enthusiastic campaign of that memorable year. There is one note of alarm heard frequently during later years, and one well worth considering by a discerning public. It is the cry of “too much voting now.” The Reverend Olympia Brown<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_26_54" id="identifier_26_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1835-1926): Universalist minister; born Prairie Ronde, Michigan; Antioch College, A.B. 1860, A.M. 1867; graduated St. Lawrence University Theological School and ordained, 1863; pastor in Massachusetts, Connecticut and especially Wisconsin; charter member of American Equal Rights Association, 1866; made at least three hundred suffrage speeches, 1867 Kansas campaign; married John Henry Willis, 1873, retaining her maiden name; president, Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association, 1884-1912; vice-president, N.W.S.A., 1884; formed Federal Suffrage Association, 1892 (reorganized as Woman’s Federal Equality Association, 1902), to campaign for Congressional suffrage resolution; president, 1903-20; member, Alice Paul’s Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party); supporter of American Civil Liberties Union and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Graves; Who was Who 1357).">26 of Wisconsin has recently furnished Congressional Committees with important facts compiled from duly accredited statistics, concerning the present and rapidly increasing domination of foreigners in the affairs of government, her discoveries being of a nature so startling, with results and so far reaching if their tendency is not checked, that the Republican party cannot afford to ignore them. The vote of the State of Wisconsin was chosen for analysis by Mrs. Brown-Willis because it was believed by her that its foreign element was already sufficiently established to form a fair basis for logical deductions for the future consideration of the several states where its numerical strength has not yet reached a maximum. The native population of Wisconsin, although outnumbering the foreign born at the census taking of 1880 by 504,847 persons, was dominated at the general election of 1888 by an excess at the polls of 40,006 foreign votes. This vast discrepancy between the census and the vote arises from the fact that native born women, who figure in the census returns as the numerical equals of men, and outnumber the foreign-born of their own sex by tens of thousands, are not reckoned in the ballot box returns, where foreign born men are counted in their full strength. The numerical excess of foreign born men over foreign born women is easily accounted for. Men leave the Father-lands in large numbers while yet unmarried, or with wives and families left behind them, and seek American soil to avoid conscription; to escape punishment for crime; to conquer poverty; to secure homesteads, and often to engender riots and breed anarchy. Women come, when they can, to accompany or follow husbands and sons. But many wives and mothers who fondly hope to come are left behind indefinitely, or altogether. Educated, intelligent, tax-paying, patriotic, school-teaching American women cannot reasonably be expected to remain content, or silent under the rule of foreign born men, many of whom never learn to speak our language, but the most of whom combine, whenever opportunity is presented, to “impose taxes upon us without our consent.” Of course there are many native born men who never fail to join the foreigner in this most un-American procedure. Like Mr. Greeley, they “don’t want women to be men;” and like him they persist in believing or trying to induce others to believe, that their refusal to grant women the ballot alone prevents the transformation. I once heard a Senator solemnly explain his adverse woman suffrage vote on the theory that God had “designed women to be mothers;” as if anybody had ever doubted the self-evident fact. And when a lady, who had no opportunity to back her readiness of retort with a reply in the Senate Chamber, told him as he came out smiling to meet her in the rotunda, that “God had also designed men to be fathers; therefore, according to his logic men should not be allowed to vote,” the grave lawmaker was silent. Another Senator said, “If women vote they must fight.” This opponent is a little man, not tall enough for military duty; therefore, there is no probability that he will ever smell gun-powder in battle, but he would think the situation most desperate if those women who are tall enough to shoulder arms, and quite ready to do it when necessary, were to arise in their might and deprive him and all men of his stature of the elective franchise. In the year 1884 the Republican party was again in a dilemma but, because it was again managed by bad advisors, who refused to profit by its lesson of 1876, it failed to guarantee to women’s “demand for additional rights” any “consideration” whatsoever. Women in large numbers retaliated that year by allying themselves with the Prohibition party; and so cunningly did they combine their forces that the pivotal state of New York was influenced, more largely by them than in any other way, to cast its vote for Mr. Cleveland and thus turn the scale in favor of the Democratic party. If the Republican party had remained true to the pledge it gave to women in its platform of 1872, there would have been no Prohibition party in 1884 with legions of women at its back to urge it forward on new lines of political action. And it is reasonably certain that, although less than 2 per cent of the women of the Nation are Prohibitionists, the great mass of them would have been enrolled under that banner under stress of political necessity during the Presidential campaign of 188827 if the Republican party had not grown wise enough under previous defeat to give our sex such recognition as it could afford to offer in its “election plank” in its Chicago platform of that year. Any class that is persistently denied the exercise of its right to do what it ought to build up will naturally do what it can to tear down. An irresponsible class is always a dangerous class, doubly armed with the elements of impatience and impetuosity, which the wisest and strongest leaders always find it difficult to guide in emergencies. It was this class of women that joined the Prohibitionists and gave the government to the Democratic party in 1884; and it was this class that in 1888 persisted in saying, “The Republican party is opposed to woman suffrage. We do not believe it means to include women in its demand for ‘a free ballot and a fair count’; it is again trying to deceive us. It does not mean women but Negroes when it says it ‘recognizes the rights of every citizen to cast one vote and have the ballot honestly counted’ let it learn its duty through the bitterness of another defeat!” Thousands of women are today acting with the Prohibitionists, and will continue to do so, because their awakened activities are welcomed nowhere else. It was largely through their influence during the national campaign of 1888 that Warner Miller<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_28_54" id="identifier_28_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1838-1918): born Hannibal, New York; graduated Union College, 1860; enlisted in New York cavalry regiment, serving under General Philip Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley; married Caroline Churchill, 1864; paper-manufacturer in Herkimer; delegate, national Republican convention, 1872; New York state assembly, 1874-76; U.S. Representative, 1879-81; appointed to fill unexpired term of Senator Thomas C. Platt, 1881; defeated for Governorship by incumbent David Bennet Hill, 1888 (“Warner Miller”; Who was Who 844).">28 was defeated in New York. They could not, or would not see with Miss Anthony, Olympia Brown-Willis, Lucy Stone<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_29_54" id="identifier_29_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim).">29, Lillie Devereux [sic] Blake<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_30_54" id="identifier_30_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97).">30, and many other leaders of large political experience, that the election plank of the national platform upon which General Harrison<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_31_54" id="identifier_31_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901): 23rd President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland.">31 was to be made President, had promised all that any party, working with the determination to win, could afford to promise to a disenfranchised class at a most critical time in its own experience, especially since it was well known that a bona fide pledge to the woman suffrage cause at that time, would arouse much of the foreign, all the vicious and ignorant and much of the religious voting element of the country against it. Men fear, most of all, the “unknown element” of women in politics. The thoughts and deeds of many of the women of today are like the first over-flow of a long pent lake. The waters of the Conemaugh were not more unruly, after their sudden escape from the enforced confinement of massive masonry<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_32_54" id="identifier_32_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A reference to the famous Johnstown Flood: On May 31, 1889, the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Conemaugh River drowned Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 20 million tons of water, killing more than 2,200 and causing $17 million in damages. The disaster posed the first major relief challenge for Clara Barton’s American Red Cross (“Johnstown Flood“).">32, than is the woman Prohibitionist, whose long-pent patriotism, finding sudden popular, if erratic, vent in the opposite direction of Liberty, is impelled to devastate the political party of her choice because she is forbidden to assist in guiding it. This long repressed power in woman, having once gained the impetus of activity, cannot be silenced, urged forward as it is by political parsons and peripatetic stump orators, each backed in his turn by hebdomadal “organs” whose chief motor is the Almighty dollar. And this thoroughly awakened woman-power is destined to grow more and more aggressive and difficult to cope with successfully until men, under the banner of the Republican party, or its otherwise inevitable successor, shall become wise enough to heed the warnings of the political heavens. It matters not for the purpose of this paper that prohibition as a means for the cure of intemperance is as inadequate to accomplish desired results as were the efforts of Dame Partington to stay the waves of the Atlantic Ocean with her mop.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_33_54" id="identifier_33_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="A well-known figure in antebellum American folklore, Ruth Partington was said to inhabit a beach cottage in Sidmouth, Devonshire. Her fame was made by English clergyman, political reformer and wit, Sydney Smith, in a 1831 speech to a crowd angry over the defeat of a parliamentary reform bill in the House of Lords, in which he compared the Lords’ resistance to public outrage to Dame Partington’s dogged but futile determination to resist a gale: “In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber picked up the character in the Boston Post in 1847; the popular Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854 (James M. Cornelius, “Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Partington“; cf. “4879. Sydney Smith. 1771-1845. John Bartlett, comp. 1919. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed“).">33 The large majority of women, even if in the Prohibition ranks, understand this perfectly. When prohibition, even in the local option, or least objectionable form was placed before them at a test election in Washington Territory in 1886, large numbers of women helped the men to vote it down. They realized that common sense methods must ultimately supersede the fanaticism of the prohibition movement. And their argument with pulpit orators and stump speakers against prohibition per se, which never has been refuted, was with many variations, like this: If you have a friend who is afflicted with an abscess in his side and you should call a physician who would prescribe an ironclad prohibitory plaster to cover up the swelling, or outward evidence of the disease, you would at once brand that physician with quackery.34 If the doctor understands his business, he will see that the abscess is a result of diseased conditions. And, instead of plastering over the affected part with an adhesive covering, he will speedily place the patient under proper hygienic treatment and permit nature to effect a cure through the wonderful recuperative power which is inherent within the man. We have a national abscess to deal with in this country, called the liquor traffic. This traffic is not the cause of intemperance, but the result of the diseased conditions of humanity,- financially, politically and morally. The sale of liquor, like the sale of shelf-worn clothing, would cease to be so large as to menace communities if it were not for the demand that creates it. Women dislike drunken husbands quite as much as men dislike drunken wives. Given: a race of women who are free and equal with men before the law; with consequent equal opportunities for occupation, emolument, education and office holding, and two generations will not pass away before husbands and fathers will voluntarily hold themselves to as strict a line of moral rectitude as they today, by tacit feminine consent, demand of wives and daughters. Women under such conditions can refuse to be mothers of men who are slaves to appetite. A mother-hen will hatch geese or ducks instead of chickens when circumstances compel her to do so, just as mother-women will often bear drunkards, or other moral monstrosities, when they would have gladly borne honorable and upright men, if the conditions surrounding them had made their dearest desires possible of fulfillment. Mother-love–the strongest of the feminine attributes–will surely enhance maternal enlightenment, resulting in crowning good to the race, when empowered, as it surely will be in the near future, with the moral, domestic and financial emancipation which can only accrue to it through political liberty. The two words force and freedom are in exact juxtaposition. One signifies coercion and the other implies responsibility. The idea one would convey is that men must be compelled to abstain from evil by forcing the government to place the opportunity to err beyond their reach, and that of the other would inspire men to do right from the love of right. Woman suffragists represent this latter and larger class; prohibitionists the former, the smaller and we think the wholly illogical one. It was not the “tariff issue,” great as it was, nor the “river and harbor question”, nor yet the “record of the war” that induced the great multitude of loyal women of America to stand by the Republican party in the last presidential campaign. Had we been unanimously in favor of the Prohibition party; or, rather, had we not been very largely opposed to it, the scale would have turned again in favor of the Democratic party, as it did in 1884, when we were given no recognition by the Republican party, and consequently made no effort to secure its triumph. But the party’s platform plank of 1888 that pledged us all we had any right to ask at that time, because it was all the party could safely accord to us under stress of its own peril, inspired our National method, put Judith Ellen Foster<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_35_54" id="identifier_35_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Judith Ellen Horton Foster (1840-1910): temperance leader, lawyer, Republican organizer; born Lowell, Massachusetts; Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, New York, 1855-56; removed to Clinton, Iowa; married E. C. Foster, 1869; admitted to Iowa bar, 1872; legal adviser to National W.C.T.U., 1880; strongly opposed Frances Willard’s commitment of the W.C.T.U. to the Prohibition Party, fearing harm to the 1884 presidential candidacy of James G. Blaine, finally bolting W.C.T.U., 1889, and organizing Non-Partisan National W.C.T.U., 1890; organized Woman’s National Republican Association, 1888, and helped found nearly a thousand local Republican woman’s clubs (Byrne).">35 at the head of our National Committee, and placed our foremost speakers and journalists at the party service. Should the leaders of the party, now fortunately in the ascendant, dodge the issue again, as it did in 1872, and ever after until 1888, it will be compelled in 1892 to learn a more humiliating lesson than was taught it in 1876, and may prepare to meet even a more disastrous defeat in 1896 than befell it in 1884. History always repeats itself with added emphasis. The party acted wisely in avoiding specific mention of women in its platform of 1888. To have raised the question of woman suffrage at such a time would have arrayed against it all the ignorance and tyranny of the native and foreign vote. But when the party is again triumphant; after it has gained another four years’ lease of power, it can safely declare itself in favor of woman’s enfranchisement and thus perpetuate its supremacy. That the vast majority of its leaders and thinking men are not averse to this measure, so manifestly in keeping with the party’s entire line of action in its vigorous youth, was proven in 1888 by the affirmative vote of twenty-four Republican senators in Congress in favor of recognizing the right of the women of Washington Territory to retain their right to vote in spite of the adverse ruling of the Democratic judges of the Supreme Court of the Territory, who were appointees of President Cleveland.36 Those judges over-rode the expressed will of the majority of both sexes by this ruling. They declared themselves “invested with power to legislate for women in all cases whatsoever.” And, to make their ruling effective, they, as women believe, and as Congress has decided in regard to Wyoming’s women voters, transcended both the letter and spirit of the Organic Act, which expressly delegates to Territories, not in rebellion, the right to determine the qualifications of their own voters through their respective Legislatures. Of the United States Senators whose names appear in the Congressional Record in disapproval of this ruling and in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution granting suffrage to women, all are Republicans, as follows:-Messrs. Hoar, Cullom, Chace, Palmer, Dolph, Blair, Mitchell, Teller, Dawes, Stewart, Manderson, Platt, Wilson, Paddock, Farwell, Bowen, Stanford, Davis, Jones, Sabin, Frye, Chandler, Plumb, and Sherman.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_37_54" id="identifier_37_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904), Massachusetts, 1877-1904; Shelby Moore Cullom (1829-1914), Illinois, 1883-1913; Jonathan Chace (1829-1917), Rhode Island, 1885-89; Thomas Witherell Palmer (1830-1913), Michigan, 1883-89; Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897), Oregon, 1883-95; Henry William Blair (1834-1920), New Hampshire, 1879-85, 1885-91; John Hipple Mitchell (1835-1905), Oregon, 1873-79, 1885-97, 1901-05; Henry Moore Teller (1830-1914), Colorado, 1876-82, 1885-97, 1897-1901, 1901-09 (would later become a Silver Republican, and then a Democrat); Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903), Massachusetts, 1875-93; William Morris Stewart (1827-1909), Nevada, 1864-75, 1887-93, 1893-01, 1901-05 (a Silver Republican in his third period of office); Charles Frederick Manderson (1837-1911), Nebraska, 1883-95; Orville Hitchcock Platt (1827-1905), Connecticut, 1879-1905; James Falconer Wilson (1828-1895), Iowa, 1883-95; Algernon Sidney Paddock (1830-1897), Nebraska, 1875-81, 1887-93; Charles Benjamin Farwell (1823-1903), Illinois, 1887-91; Thomas Mead Bowen (1835-1906), Colorado, 1883-89; Leland Stanford (1824-1893), California, 1885-93; Cushman Kellogg Davis (1838-1900), Minnesota, 1887-1900; John Percival Jones (1829-1912), Nevada, 1873-95, 1895-1901, 1901-03 (a Silver Republican in his middle term); Dwight May Sabin (1843-1902), Minnesota, 1883-89; William Pierce Frye (1830-1911), Maine, 1881-1911; William Eaton Chandler (1835-1917), New Hampshire, 1887-89, 1889-1901; Preston B. Plumb (1837-1891), Kansas, 1877-91; John Sherman (1823-1900), Ohio, 1861-77, 1881-97.">37 A formidable showing, truly; and one which so plainly indicates the drift of Republican sentiment as to require no comment. General Harrison, who, by the grace of God, the votes of men and the influence of women, was safely seated in the Presidential chair in 1889, made use of the following significant language in his famous letter of acceptance:- “I would like to hear a bugle call resounding through the land demanding a pure ballot. A free ballot, honestly expressed and fairly counted, is the main safeguard of our institutions; and its suppression, under any circumstances, is not to be tolerated.” In the President’s inaugural address, is found the following: “Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot box and about the elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not only be pure and free, but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon discover the need of reform. …The freedom of the ballot is a condition of our National life, and no power vested in Congress or in the executive to secure or perpetuate it should remain unused upon occasion….The sympathy and help of our people will not be withheld from any community struggling with special embarrassments or difficulties connected with the suffrage if the remedies proposed proceed upon lawful lines and are promoted by just and honorable methods….The man who has come to regard the ballot-box as a juggler’s hat has renounced his allegiance.” The “special embarrassments” connected with the suffrages of women in Washington Territory were quite as difficult to meet, and certainly as unlawfully promoted, as those which were in use to suppress the colored vote in the Southern States. And it would have been gratifying indeed to women who have faithfully adhered to the Republican party, in spite of the proferred aid of the Prohibitionists, if they could have seen in the seat of power a man who was broad enough in his views and fearless enough in expressing them on the very threshold of his administration to make such declarations, sufficiently honest to carry them out, to the end that they could feel warranted in relying upon his firmness in executing the laws for the protection of women as well as Negroes. But the loyal women of Washington Territory relied in vain upon the Republican party to perpetuate their enfranchisement. They denied the authority of an appointive and ephemeral Democratic judiciary to “exercise an unwarrantable jurisdiction over them.” And they did what they could to undo its nefarious work in the Autumn of 1889, while the vote was pending that made their Territory a state with their ballots excluded by the Constitution. By thus conniving at political usurpation in the Northwest the Republican party became the active tool and willing ally of the Democratic party of the South. Its judges of election refused the votes of women electors in direct violation of the Federal law, and in open hostility to the same Republican form of government which is in active force today in Wyoming, where the status of woman suffrage under Territorial law was precisely analogous to that of Washington under the laws enacted by its own legislature.<a href="https://asduniway.org/woman-suffrage-and-the-republican-party-circa-1892/#footnote_38_54" id="identifier_38_54" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Historian T. A. Larson interprets these events somewhat differently. Noting that men rejected woman suffrage by a margin greater than two to one, and that only four of 34 counties favored it, he observes: “Suffragists have usually explained the loss of suffrage as the work of prejudiced judges. Apparently, the judges were prejudiced, but so also were most of the male electors in 1889” (“Washington” 55).">38 It was through this policy, carried out under cover of a Democratic method, in a commonwealth largely Republican, that the men of Washington were able to shut the iron doors of a state constitution in the faces of the women voters. But the Republican party, despite its many sins of omission and commission, is so solidly allied to the cause of equal rights that it cannot wholly dodge its manifest duty, since by the record it has made in Congress, in its efforts to prevent the unwarrantable jurisdiction of political usurpers over those empowered at any time with electoral rights, it has plainly provided Federal, if not local redress for such grievances (See United States Revised Statutes; law enacted May 31st, 1870; Chapter 14, Section 2, page 80), which especially stipulates that every judge of election who refuses to receive and record such ballots “shall forfeit the sum of Five Hundred ($500) Dollars to the party aggrieved by such refusal or omission, to be recovered by an action on the case with costs, and such allowance for counsel fees as the court may deem just.” That the Republican party has not, in its later and less honorable years, obeyed the law of its earlier making, and is therefore under the ban of the righteous impeachment by patriotic citizens, is evidenced by the late decisions of the courts of Washington State, wherein this enactment of Congress is flagrantly nullified. The enfranchisement of women as a question of abstract right, cannot be successfully opposed by anybody. There are questions of political expediency to be considered, however, in connection therewith, which the Republican party cannot long remain dominant and ignore. The Whig Party dallied with human slavery until internal dissensions wrought its complete disintegration. The uprising of the Prohibitionists–a distinctly anti-Republican measure–the formation of the Farmers’ Alliance, the active coalition of Labor Reformers of every grade, alike proclaim the prevailing discontent within the rank of the Republican party, which formerly comprised a political unity of forces as patriotic as it was irresistible. The party is again upon the verge of perilous times. It approaches a National Campaign, handicapped by a Democratic House of Representatives, into whose hands it will be the policy of opposing political forces to throw, if possible, the decision of the Electoral vote. It has not fulfilled its pledges to “the loyal women of America,” nor sustained President Harrison in his ringing promise (made before election) “not to tolerate the suppression of the ballot under any circumstances.” What does it propose to do with the woman suffrage question in the coming crisis? There is no other vital issue before it that has not already been espoused or openly opposed. The “loyal women” are in its ranks and they are there to stay, if recognized as equals; but if they deem it necessary to repeat the lesson of its defeat, as in former years, it will find them organized as never before to perform the unpleasant duty. NOTES 104. Morison 80-86, 104-06. Harrison was the incumbent, having defeated Cleveland four years earlier, at which time Cleveland had been the incumbent, having defeated James G. Blaine in the election of 1884. New Northwest 12 Aug. 1886. Her claim (repeated here) was not unfounded: The 25,000 votes received by Prohibition Party candidate John P. St. John in New York may have cost the Republicans the state and thereby the election (Robert C. Kennedy, “Cold Water Comfort”). “The Destiny of Our Republic” n. 4-6. Qtd. in Moynihan, Rebel 197. Cleveland was to be returned to the Presidency with more than 5.5 million votes to Harrison’s almost 5.2 million. Cleveland, who carried seven Northern states and the solid South, had a heavy electoral majority. However, Weaver polled more than a million votes and carried four states. Even Bidwell received more total votes–over 270,000–than any Prohibition candidate, before or since. Moynihan, Rebel 166. A nativist theme she had been sounding at least since the 1884 defeat (“U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage”). Three years later, in response to a comment by a populist that he was “ashamed” of the party for “dodging” the suffrage question at its convention, “Mrs. Duniway replied that self-preservation is the first law of nature; that the populist craft had as much as it could do, in its present stage of progress, to carry the driftwood of the voting contingent which was beached by the older parties and always attached itself to new political movements. She said it was the duty of the republican party to lead the suffrage movement, because it was strong enough to carry it without peril” (Pacific Empire 14 May 1896). (1811-1872): journalist, politician; founded widely-read New York Tribune, 1841; served briefly in U.S. House of Representatives, 1848-49, thereafter failing several attempts at election to Congress; abolitionist; free soil sympathizer; prominent Republican who bucked public opinion by opposing Lincoln’s renomination, 1864, and signing bail bond for jailed former president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, 1867; nominated for President by anti-Grant Republicans, and endorsed by Democrats, 1872, but lost conclusively (Nevins; Ashley, 1690-1872 256-72). Fed up with corruption in the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, who had been elected in 1868, anti-Grant Republicans formed the short-lived Liberal Republican Party and nominated Greeley. The Democrats did not nominate their own candidate, instead endorsing Greeley (“United States presidential election, 1872“). Suffragists, who had reason to hope that he would embrace their cause, were bitterly disillusioned upon learning that Greeley’s liberality did not extend to women’s enfranchisement. None was more disillusioned than Scott Duniway, who had been an avid and regular reader of the Tribune since the age of 14 (Moynihan, Rebel 10). Abigail held her nose and supported Grant’s re-election (Bandow 62-64). This also was the election in which radical Victoria Claflin Woodhull ran on the Equal Rights ticket (ostensibly with abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass as her running mate, although he never consented to do so). Scott Duniway strongly disapproved of Claflin Woodhull (“San Francisco County Woman Suffrage Association” n. 13; “Eminent Women I Have Met” n. 29). (1815-1893): political pamphleteer for the anti-foreign, anti-Catholic “Know-Nothing” party of the mid-1850s, later for the Union as a border stater who opposed abolition. A purported military strategist, she claimed to have authored the plan to invade the Confederacy via the Tennessee, rather than the Mississippi, river valley and attempted for 14 years to obtain payment from Congress (Boyer). Her claim was highly dubious but Scott Duniway here repeats the sympathetic interpretation widely argued and publicized in the 1880s by suffragists, who portrayed her as a victim of male injustice. Mary Ashton Rice Livermore (1820-1905): born into strict Calvinist Baptist family; became abolitionist while tutoring children on plantation, regarding slavery as “demoralizing and debasing,” 1839-42; married Universalist minister Daniel Livermore to dismay of her family, 1845; three daughters; prize-winning author of Thirty Years Too Late, concerning temperance, 1845, and A Mental Transformation, about religion, 1848; nurse and key organizer, Northwestern Branch, U.S. Sanitary Commission during Civil War; organized first woman suffrage convention in Chicago, 1868; edited Agitator, Chicago suffrage organ, and Woman’s Journal when two merged, 1870-72; president, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1875-78; lyceum speaker, known as “Queen of the American Platform” (Riegel; Charles A. Howe, “Mary and Daniel Livermore”; Lord passim). (1821-1912): born North Oxford, Massachusetts; taught first in hometown, then in Trenton and Bordentown, New Jersey; worked in U.S. Patent Office, Washington, D.C., c. 1853-56; earned title “Angel of the Battlefield” for efforts on behalf of wounded soldiers and Sanitary Commission during Civil War; introduced to Society of the Red Cross while in Switzerland, 1869, and during Franco-Prussian war; returned to U.S., 1873; founder, in 1877, and president, for 23 years, of American Red Cross; instrumental in U.S. ratification of Geneva treaty for Red Cross, 1882 (Curti; M. Roberts; Willard and Livermore 1: 60-62). (1819-1910): woman’s club and suffrage leader; authored “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” 1862; helped found New England Women’s Club and New England Woman Suffrage Association, 1868; became leader in more conservative A.W.S.A.; served on committee that negotiated union of A.W.S.A. and N.W.S.A., 1890 (Boyer, “Howe”; Huxman, “Julia Ward Howe”; Lord passim). (1815-1902): abolitionist, suffragist; authored “Declaration of Sentiments” of 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; publisher, Revolution, 1868-69; first president, National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; first president, merged National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1890; co-authored first three volumes of History of Woman Suffrage, 1881-86, and The Woman’s Bible (2 vols. 1895, 1898) (Lutz, “Stanton”; Campbell, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton”). Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906): born South Adams, Massachusetts; abolitionist; leader in woman’s rights reform; teacher, c. 1835-1850; joined Daughters of Temperance, 1847; organized New York State Temperance Association, 1852; publisher, Revolution, 1868-70; co-founded National Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; vice president at large, 1869-92; president, National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1892-1900; arrested and tried for voting in 1872 Presidential election, refusing to pay $100 fine; initiated History of Woman Suffrage; helped found International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1904 (Lutz, “Anthony”; Barry; Willard and Livermore 1: 30-31). Following a bitter campaign, Grant was re-elected. Greeley polled more than forty percent of the popular vote; he died before the electoral college met, and his eighty-six electoral votes were distributed among four minor candidates (“Horace Greeley“). Grant was to confirm the Liberal Republicans’ worst fears (and embarrass those Republicans, including suffragists, who had remained loyal) when the notorious Whiskey Ring scandal, in which distillers bribed government officials in order to avoid taxes, was exposed three years later, in 1875 (“Whiskey Ring“). See “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 39. (1808-1889): president of the Confederacy for the duration of the Civil War, 1861-65. Mary Simmerson Cunningham Logan (1838-1923): political wife and writer; married General John Alexander Logan, Republican politician and Army officer, 1855; freed slave given by her family as wedding gift; tutored by Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas in social politics, 1858; during Civil War, accompanied Logan in the field, mustering supplies and recruiting nurses for hospitals; nationally renowned creator, “Striped Hospital of the Thirty-first Regiment”; inventor of Memorial Day, to honor Union heroes; closely associated with Woman’s Relief Corps, auxiliary to Grand Army of the Republic, and with Clara Barton and American Red Cross; Board of Lady Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, 1890; after husband’s death, 1886, turned to writing in magazines and books, including The Part Taken by Women in American History, 1912 (Louise Young; Leah Sheffer, “Mary Logan: A Distinguished American Woman”). Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke (1817-1901): Civil War hospital worker and spokesperson for Sanitary Commission; born near Mount Vernon, Ohio; helped establish hospitals in Memphis, nursed the wounded of battles of Vicksburg, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Chattanooga; accompanied Sherman on his “March to the Sea”, attending to some 13,000 wounded; later moved to San Francisco, volunteered with Salvation Army and other benevolent organizations; helped organize California branch of Woman’s Relief Corp (auxiliary of Grand Army of the Republic) (G. Adams; Willard and Livermore 1: 81-82). (1811-1896): born Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana and Lyman Beecher; educated and taught at Hartford Female Academy, and Western Female Institute, Cincinnati, founded by sister Catharine, 1823 and 1832, respectively; married Calvin Stowe, 1836; seven children; authored several novels, including best-selling Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1850; following publication, become prominent anti-slavery speaker in U.S. and Europe; wrote another anti-slavery novel, Dred, 1852; met President Abraham Lincoln, 1862 (Cross; “Harriet Beecher Stowe”). Thomas Hart Benton (1782-1858): lawyer, journalist and politician; served in War of 1812; editor of (St. Louis) Missouri Enquirer, 1818-20; U.S. Senate, 1821-25; nicknamed “Old Bullion” for opposing the national bank and championing “hard money”; moderate on slavery; a loyal Democrat, opposed his own son-in-law, John C Frémont, Republican candidate for the presidency in 1886; grand-uncle of painter Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) (Corning 27; “Thomas Hart Benton Biography”). Thirty Years’ View: or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820-1850. 2 vols. New York: Appleton, 1854, 1856. (1773-1841): soldier; Indian fighter who battled Tecumseh’s rebels in battle of Tippecanoe, 1811; Congressman, 1817-19, and Senator, 1825-28, from Ohio; elected ninth President (as a Whig), running with John Tyler, on the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” (1835-1926): Universalist minister; born Prairie Ronde, Michigan; Antioch College, A.B. 1860, A.M. 1867; graduated St. Lawrence University Theological School and ordained, 1863; pastor in Massachusetts, Connecticut and especially Wisconsin; charter member of American Equal Rights Association, 1866; made at least three hundred suffrage speeches, 1867 Kansas campaign; married John Henry Willis, 1873, retaining her maiden name; president, Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association, 1884-1912; vice-president, N.W.S.A., 1884; formed Federal Suffrage Association, 1892 (reorganized as Woman’s Federal Equality Association, 1902), to campaign for Congressional suffrage resolution; president, 1903-20; member, Alice Paul’s Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party); supporter of American Civil Liberties Union and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Graves; Who was Who 1357). The first contest between Cleveland and Harrison, in which Harrison received almost 100,000 fewer popular votes but carried the Electoral College, 233 to 168. (1838-1918): born Hannibal, New York; graduated Union College, 1860; enlisted in New York cavalry regiment, serving under General Philip Sheridan in Shenandoah Valley; married Caroline Churchill, 1864; paper-manufacturer in Herkimer; delegate, national Republican convention, 1872; New York state assembly, 1874-76; U.S. Representative, 1879-81; appointed to fill unexpired term of Senator Thomas C. Platt, 1881; defeated for Governorship by incumbent David Bennet Hill, 1888 (“Warner Miller”; Who was Who 844). (1818-1893): first Massachusetts woman to earn college degree (at Oberlin, 1847); lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society; instrumental in calling national woman’s rights convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1850; presided over seventh national woman’s rights convention in New York, 1856; instrumental in organizing American Equal Rights Association to agitate for both woman and Negro suffrage, 1866; co-founder, American Woman Suffrage Association, 1869; founder, chief financier and, after 1872, editor of Woman’s Journal (Filler, “Stone”; Lord passim). Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake (c. 1833-1913): author, reformer; born Raleigh, North Carolina; tutored at home in Yale College course, New Haven, Connecticut; married attorney Frank G. Q. Umsted, 1855; widowed, 1859; turned to writing stories and novels; married New York merchant Grinfill Blake, 1866; agitated for opening of Columbia College to women, 1873, leading to founding of Barnard College; President, New York State Woman Suffrage Association, 1879-90; contender with Carrie Lane Chapman Catt for head of N.A.W.S.A., 1900; organized National Legislative League to correct legal abuses (Willard and Livermore 1: 96-97). Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901): 23rd President of the United States, 1889-93; grandson of ninth President, William Henry Harrison; born North Bend, Ohio; three years as Union officer during Civil War; strongly supported Reconstruction; lost election as Indiana governor, 1876; U.S. Senate, 1881; moderate Republican; nominated for Presidency, 1888, losing popular vote by more than 90,000 to Democrat Grover Cleveland, but winning electoral majority; renominated, 1892, but growing labor strikes and Populist discontent over economic depression gave election to Cleveland. A reference to the famous Johnstown Flood: On May 31, 1889, the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam on the Conemaugh River drowned Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 20 million tons of water, killing more than 2,200 and causing $17 million in damages. The disaster posed the first major relief challenge for Clara Barton’s American Red Cross (“Johnstown Flood“). A well-known figure in antebellum American folklore, Ruth Partington was said to inhabit a beach cottage in Sidmouth, Devonshire. Her fame was made by English clergyman, political reformer and wit, Sydney Smith, in a 1831 speech to a crowd angry over the defeat of a parliamentary reform bill in the House of Lords, in which he compared the Lords’ resistance to public outrage to Dame Partington’s dogged but futile determination to resist a gale: “In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm [at Sidmouth], Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal; the Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington.” American humorist Benjamin Penhallow Shillaber picked up the character in the Boston Post in 1847; the popular Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington appeared in 1854 (James M. Cornelius, “Mr. Lincoln and Mrs. Partington“; cf. “4879. Sydney Smith. 1771-1845. John Bartlett, comp. 1919. Familiar Quotations, 10th ed“). Scott Duniway had employed this metaphor in the third of her series on “The Temperance Problem,” six years before (New Northwest 22 July 1886). Judith Ellen Horton Foster (1840-1910): temperance leader, lawyer, Republican organizer; born Lowell, Massachusetts; Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, New York, 1855-56; removed to Clinton, Iowa; married E. C. Foster, 1869; admitted to Iowa bar, 1872; legal adviser to National W.C.T.U., 1880; strongly opposed Frances Willard’s commitment of the W.C.T.U. to the Prohibition Party, fearing harm to the 1884 presidential candidacy of James G. Blaine, finally bolting W.C.T.U., 1889, and organizing Non-Partisan National W.C.T.U., 1890; organized Woman’s National Republican Association, 1888, and helped found nearly a thousand local Republican woman’s clubs (Byrne). “Ballots and Bullets” n. 40. George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904), Massachusetts, 1877-1904; Shelby Moore Cullom (1829-1914), Illinois, 1883-1913; Jonathan Chace (1829-1917), Rhode Island, 1885-89; Thomas Witherell Palmer (1830-1913), Michigan, 1883-89; Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897), Oregon, 1883-95; Henry William Blair (1834-1920), New Hampshire, 1879-85, 1885-91; John Hipple Mitchell (1835-1905), Oregon, 1873-79, 1885-97, 1901-05; Henry Moore Teller (1830-1914), Colorado, 1876-82, 1885-97, 1897-1901, 1901-09 (would later become a Silver Republican, and then a Democrat); Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903), Massachusetts, 1875-93; William Morris Stewart (1827-1909), Nevada, 1864-75, 1887-93, 1893-01, 1901-05 (a Silver Republican in his third period of office); Charles Frederick Manderson (1837-1911), Nebraska, 1883-95; Orville Hitchcock Platt (1827-1905), Connecticut, 1879-1905; James Falconer Wilson (1828-1895), Iowa, 1883-95; Algernon Sidney Paddock (1830-1897), Nebraska, 1875-81, 1887-93; Charles Benjamin Farwell (1823-1903), Illinois, 1887-91; Thomas Mead Bowen (1835-1906), Colorado, 1883-89; Leland Stanford (1824-1893), California, 1885-93; Cushman Kellogg Davis (1838-1900), Minnesota, 1887-1900; John Percival Jones (1829-1912), Nevada, 1873-95, 1895-1901, 1901-03 (a Silver Republican in his middle term); Dwight May Sabin (1843-1902), Minnesota, 1883-89; William Pierce Frye (1830-1911), Maine, 1881-1911; William Eaton Chandler (1835-1917), New Hampshire, 1887-89, 1889-1901; Preston B. Plumb (1837-1891), Kansas, 1877-91; John Sherman (1823-1900), Ohio, 1861-77, 1881-97. Historian T. A. Larson interprets these events somewhat differently. Noting that men rejected woman suffrage by a margin greater than two to one, and that only four of 34 counties favored it, he observes: “Suffragists have usually explained the loss of suffrage as the work of prejudiced judges. Apparently, the judges were prejudiced, but so also were most of the male electors in 1889” (“Washington” 55).
In addition to her efforts in Oregon and Washington, Scott Duniway campaigned vigorously for suffrage in nearby Idaho for many years. By her own account, from 1876 to 1895, she traveled over 12,000 miles “by river, rail, stage, and buckboard,” delivered 140 public lectures in at least twenty-two cities and towns, addressed the territorial legislature […]
In addition to her efforts in Oregon and Washington, Scott Duniway campaigned vigorously for suffrage in nearby Idaho for many years. By her own account, from 1876 to 1895, she traveled over 12,000 miles “by river, rail, stage, and buckboard,” delivered 140 public lectures in at least twenty-two cities and towns, addressed the territorial legislature in 1887, wrote hundreds of columns of correspondence and canvassed the territory “on foot from house to house” for the New Northwest. Indeed, for a time the family owned a ranch in the Lost River Valley.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_1_52" id="identifier_1_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In the spring of 1886, while on a lecture tour of southern Idaho, Abigail and Willis filed claims on two large tracts of land near the villages of Hailey and Antelope Station. Their motives were largely speculative: They hoped that irrigation schemes and a proposed railroad route, to which Harvey Scott had tipped them, would pay off. Wearied by political brawling and Clara’s death, and perhaps envisioning a chance to make her cooperative economic ideals a reality, Abigail was persuaded to sell the New Northwest. In July, Ben, who missed his ranching days, and sons moved to Idaho while she remained in Portland to finish out the paper’s last year of publication. She spent two weeks in Idaho in January, 1887, but quickly returned to the warmth of her Clay Street house. Thereafter she visited only during summers. Her hopes for the Idaho properties never materialized and by the spring of 1892 she offered them for sale (Moynihan, Rebel 162-63, 187, 189-90; cf. L. Johnson 514; Kessler, “Siege of the Citadels: Search” 145; Richey, “Hard Scrabble” 92).">1 The following address was delivered before the Idaho Constitutional Convention, meeting in Boise. It was made, in part, in response to lobbying by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union for a prohibition rider to an equal suffrage article in the forthcoming state constitution. Fearing that the rider would doom the cause, Scott Duniway argued vigorously for an unqualified equal suffrage clause. Eventually, such an amendment would be submitted to the voters in referendum; in November, 1896, equal suffrage would come to the women of Idaho.2 Scott Duniway’s role in the Idaho campaigns was controversial. Her efforts over the years were undeniably prodigious. But her opposition to prohibition and her preference for quiet, “still hunt” tactics directed at leading citizens over noisy, public “hurrah” campaigns placed her at odds with the national leadership. Susan B. Anthony would order her to quit the decisive Idaho campaign in 1895 and confine her efforts to Oregon. Scott Duniway would go, but not altogether quietly. Within two months of the culminating referendum, the Pacific Empire<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_3_52" id="identifier_3_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="21 Jan. 1897. Unwelcome in the Idaho campaign and seeking to restore her journalistic voice, Scott Duniway joined this new weekly periodical, published by her “warm friend” Frances E. Gotshall, as editor in August, 1895. Unlike most prohibitionists who would have nothing to do with Scott Duniway, Gotshall, an officer in the state W.C.T.U. who also believed firmly that suffrage was just and right, admired her and often acted as conciliator between the two “warring factions” of Abigail and her allies on one hand and the W.C.T.U. and the prohibitionist wing of O.S.W.S.A. on the other (Montague 69; Kessler, “Siege of the Citadels: Search” 145-46).">3 published an open letter, under the headline, “The Way Idaho Was Carried,” and prefaced by a comment from the publisher that it “ought to show the head officers of our N.A.W.S.A. how to run a campaign–and succeed.” In this letter, Scott Duniway summarized her efforts there, defended her tactics, and concluded: “I hereby make this explanation that all the friends may understand my reason for abandoning the field I loved so much, when victory was in sight. But I am resolved to return to Idaho, to become a free woman, as soon as my work is done in Oregon, to which I am now consigned, and in which I humbly hope I may be allowed to succeed.” Fifteen months later, the Pacific Empire reprinted a version of this speech in an effort to influence the equal suffrage campaign then underway in Washington. Scott Duniway always blamed the 1887 disenfranchisement of Washington women on the equal suffrage alliance with prohibition, a charge she repeats here; thus, republication represented her effort to prevent history from repeating itself. At the time of its delivery, this speech was reported in the Idaho Daily Statesman (July 19 and July 20, 1889). Two revised and condensed versions were published much later, in the Pacific Empire (June 9, 1898)<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_4_52" id="identifier_4_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="It is a measure of the degree to which Scott Duniway and the Pacific Empire’s editorial outlook had diverged that, even though Gotshall had rejoined the editorial staff by this point, the newspaper contained the following disclaimer: “We print this week, by request, an address by Mrs. A. S. Duniway, but in so doing we wish to distinctly state that we assume no responsibility for the sentiments contained therein.”">4 and in Path Breaking5. There are substantial discrepancies among the three, including even the dates of the speech.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_6_52" id="identifier_6_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Path Breaking records that the address was delivered on July 16 and reprinted in the Statesman on July 18 (131; the Woman’s Tribune also reported that it was given on the 16th [27 July 1889]). However, the Statesman version appears in two parts, on July 19 and 20, and records that the speech itself was delivered on July 17.">6 The Path Breaking version, which is by far the best known and most widely available, is also the most abridged. For example, it omits five interesting paragraphs in which Scott Duniway speculates on the financial motives of prohibition leaders and relates these motives to the economic status of women generally. Both the Pacific Empire and Path Breaking versions omit a brief but telling condemnation of the Mormon practice of polygamy. Thus, I have reconstructed a complete, hybrid text from the three versions, with differences among them marked as follows: « »: in PE only { }: in IDS only < >: in PB only / /: in PE and PB, not in IDS \ \: in PE and IDS, not in PB In cases of nontrivial discrepancies among the three, alternate renderings appear in footnotes. Mr. President<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_7_52" id="identifier_7_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Horace Clagett (1838-1901): born Upper Marlboro, Maryland; moved with father to Keokuk, Iowa, 1850; attended public schools; studied law in Keokuk and at the law school in Albany, New York; admitted to bar, 1858, and commenced practice in Keokuk; moved to Carson City, Nevada, 1861, and Humboldt, Nevada, 1862; member, territorial house of representatives, 1862-63, and state house of representatives, 1864-65; practiced law, Virginia City, Nevada, Helena, Montana, and Deer Lodge, Montana; Republican delegate from Montana to 42nd Congress, 1871-73; authored legislation eventuating in creation of Yellowstone National Park; denied reelection; resumed law practice in Deer Lodge, Denver, Deadwood (Dakota Territory), Portland, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; president, Idaho constitutional convention, 1889; unsuccessful candidate, U.S. Senate from Idaho, 1891, 1895; resumed law practice in Spokane, Washington (Biographical Directory; “William H. Clagett“).">7, and Members of the Convention, Gentlemen and Ladies8: {I deeply appreciate the honor you confer upon the humblest member of the otherwise unrepresented class when you permit one of us to come before your honorable body to join you for even one brief hour in the consideration of those topics which vitally interest all the people of our commonwealth.} Although /much of/ what I have to say in your presence9 tonight will differ materially from the utterances of other women who have been graciously accorded a hearing before your honorable body10, I think you will {all} concede, before I have finished, that women are learning to express their differences of opinion in a spirit of tolerance toward one another such as would have been beyond their power to exhibit before they had begun11 to be imbued with the desire for liberty which now inspires them12. Just as, in the infancy of the government of these13 United States, the people who lived beyond our14 Rocky Mountains, and /beyond/ the valley/s/ of the /Ohio and/ \the\ Mississippi /Rivers,/ formed newer and15 broader conceptions of the fundamental principles of a true democracy16 {under the plastic conditions of their new environment} than had been dreamed of by their ancestors /across the Atlantic seas/, so in these yet new«er» states of the Pacific Northwest,17 the people of a new generation are forming {yet} broader conceptions of the glorious heritage in store for them and their children than their ancestors ever18 anticipated. {I realize as I stand in this honorable presence that we, the people of Idaho, are making history. For although the class I represent is not otherwise represented in this body, the fact that you, gentlemen, have now for the second time convened to give woman a hearing, is proof that the world is moving in the right direction. Without attempting to consume the time of this Convention in rehearsing facts of history with which it is conceded you are all well acquainted, I will at once take up the subject which your chivalry has permitted us to consider, namely, the fundamental principles upon which the government of the United States is founded. The fact that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed is no longer disputed by any set of law makers; nor is its logical sequence19 disputed–that taxation and representation are co-existent factors in all just governments. You, gentlemen, have already occupied a fortnight in convention assembled, combining your wisdom, erudition, eloquence and logic in the incubation of a state constitution, to be presented to your electors–not woman’s unless by your permission–in the forthcoming month of October. So far as you have yet gone in the completion of such parts of your work as has come under the observation of women in lonely stock ranch cabins (like ours in the Lost River wilderness20 it has seemed to most of us that you have legislated wisely and well. We cordially approve the public spirit you have manifested in considering the just claims of the executive and the judiciary as well as the legislative departments of a state government to such constitutional protection as well as such constitutional restriction as shall best insure the proper administration of public and private affairs among men. We also cordially and heartily approve your manly determination to permit no alien or theocratic power to arise among us to wield our ballots and control our offices while bearing allegiance to a dynasty of priests. And} Although there is a /wide/ diversity of opinion among us21 upon one question, which women22 have sought to place before you /at a former hearing–I allude to/23 the trite one of prohibition, to which less than two per cent of the women of this24 territory, or of the nation, adhere–there is a remarkable25 unanimity of sentiment in our ranks concerning the justice of our plea for our own enfranchisement.26 Women, like men, are rapidly outgrowing the idea that prohibition is a reformatory measure. When the idea was first placed27 before them by press and pulpit, a good many28 grasped it as a sort of providential /opportunity for a popular/ compromise between their own long-repressed29 mentality and their desire to perform some public act for which press, people and pulpit would praise and pat and pet and pay them.30 {They soon discovered, also, that as an ally of the church they had not only found an avenue to fame and honor, but to emolument also.} These facts, and more especially the last named, /have/ so stimulated the repressed ambition31 /of a few women/ that it has not been32 difficult for political cranks <and professional agitators>, who had /previously/ been kicked out of the old parties, to secure their cat’s-paw services in raking chestnuts for themselves from the fires of political controversy. «Mr. President: It is the easiest thing on earth to make a prohibition speech. Anybody can recount the horrors of drunkenness and berate the evil influences of the saloon; and many a woman, who before had never jingled a coin in her pocket that she could call her own, has found an easy avenue for making money by engaging in this agitation. I am not blaming women for earning money. I am simply stating a fact. Money is the motive power that moves the world. No woman, especially one who works for prohibition in a professional way, is blind to the financial contingent, as any business man or church, or newspaper realizes when responding to the constantly recurring demands for money that invariably accompany her efforts. Women have been servants without wages for centuries; and it is not to be wondered at that they have sought eagerly to enter this avenue of prohibition, the first that has opened to them wherein they might collect money, enjoying notoriety and travel, and at the same time receive the plaudits as well as the pay of man. I do not mean that the rank and file of resident prohibition women are to be included in this category. It is of the itinerant leaders I speak; and I beg you, gentlemen, to remember that in pursuing this hobby, and never losing sight of its emoluments, they are only following the example of voters engaged in the same business. Be patient with them. You ought not to expect that they will cease to harp upon their chosen theme as long as they can make it pay. And this too, in spite of the fact that no attempt at coercion, or the enactment of any sort of arbitrary legislation has ever yet restrained any man in his voluntary desire to indulge his vices.»<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_33_52" id="identifier_33_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The IDS version of these five paragraphs (omitted from PB) is somewhat different in style, if not theme, as follows: “It is the easiest thing on earth to make a political speech. Anybody can recount the horrors of drunkenness and the evil influences of the saloon. And many a woman who had never before jingled a coin in her pocket that she could call her own found an easy avenue for making money in this new departure. I am not blaming them for earning money. I am simply stating facts. Money is the motive power that moves the world. It is more potent than religion and more powerful even than love. No organization can long exist without it. It is as potent a factor with the church as with its adversary, the saloon. We all know it is not lost sight of by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and I may frankly add that the Woman Suffrage Association, as well as this honorable body, is obliged to admit and consider its claims. I am not complaining, but simply stating facts, that you may see that women are not blind to the financial situation. Hitherto their opportunities have been sadly circumscribed in money matters; and it is not to be wondered at that they have sought willingly the first avenues that have opened to them for making money by methods wherein they might work and travel, and at the same time receive the pay and plaudits of men. Multitudes of the great rank and file of prohibition women are not to be included in this category. It is of the leaders I speak, and I beg you, gentlemen, to remember that in pursuing this hobby and never losing sight of its emoluments, they are only following the example of men engaged in the same business. Be patient with them. They have plenty of material in sight in every town they visit upon which to expend their eloquence; nor can you expect they will cease to harp upon it as long as they can make it pay. Of the philosophy of prohibition I need say but little. Every thinking man or woman who analyzes the subject closely reaches one conclusion, and that is that coercion, or any species of arbitrary law, never yet restrained any man in his vices.”">33 The stale argument, /with which you have recently been regaled,/ that compares horse-stealing, against which we have prohibitory laws by common and undisputed consent, with liquor selling, <using,> /or buying,/ about which there are many differences of opinion, is most unfair, since there are no laws against horse-selling, provided the purchaser is ready with the cash and the horse he wants to buy34 is all its owner claims for it. In like manner is the comparison between the prohibition of liquor-selling and35 the prohibition of murder unfair, since the sale of /ropes,/ knives, guns36 and ammunition is not prohibited, except under certain conditions, /to which all law-abiding people agree/; nor are humanity and horses forbidden to exist because some men are murdered and many horses are stolen. {Of the evils of intemperance and the suffering of its victims I need not speak, since I could not hope to teach or edify you on these points.} I frankly confess that if I were the Omnipotent Power with my finite conception of mundane things, I should not hesitate to prohibit everything that I believe to be evil.37 I would38 like to prohibit /every form of intemperance, <including> self-righteousness,/ woe, want39, /war,/ poverty, excessive riches, murder, arson, slander, /fever, contagion,/ lust, covetousness, <drunkards,> gluttony, lying, robbery, /cruelty,/ theft,–everything that debases any element of our humanity40; but since I can’t, and God in His wisdom plainly teaches me that this is not His plan,41 I have no desire, nor have the very large majority of women–I mean the self-poised, liberty-loving women whom I have the honor to represent–42 the remotest desire43 to run a tilt against Omnipotence. \Clearly, the prohibition movement is dying out. Need I instance Connecticut, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington44, where it has lately met with overwhelming defeat, in support of this statement? Women, as well as men, have lost faith in its efficacy as a reformatory temperance method45, by {the} tens of thousands, within the past ten46 years.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_47_52" id="identifier_47_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="These “defeats” were less definitive than Scott Duniway implies. The Connecticut legislature voted in 1880 to submit the question to popular vote, but the measure failed when the Senate refused necessary action in 1882. In Michigan, resolutions failed in the legislature in 1881 (when it obtained a simple majority but failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority) and 1883, but passed in 1887, where it was defeated at the polls. Rhode Island adopted constitutional prohibition in 1886 and repealed it in 1889. The Oregon legislature acted favorably in 1885 and 1887, submitting an amendment which was defeated at the polls in 1887. A measure failed in the Massachusetts legislature in 1881 but succeeded in 1887 and 1889, where it was defeated at the polls. In Pennsylvania, the lower house approved submission in 1881, the Senate not until 1889, at which time the public rejected it. The people of Washington rejected a constitutional amendment in 1889. While the Vermont legislature rejected a submission resolution in 1883, the state remained under a statutory prohibition first enacted in 1852 and strengthened in 1881; it did not back-slide until 1902, when it reverted to local option. In addition, during this same ten-year period, prohibition amendments were adopted in Kansas (1880), Maine (1884), and North and South Dakota (1889); Iowa voters approved an amendment, only to have it subsequently overturned by the courts; in Ohio (1883) voters approved a prohibition amendment and defeated a license amendment, with the peculiar effect that the latter nullified the former by virtue of a requirement that the former receive a majority of all votes cast in the election; and the territory of Alaska was placed under Prohibition by President Grover Cleveland (1884). Finally, substantial prohibition agitation in at least 14 other states typically achieved increasing success in the legislatures even if ultimately rejected in popular votes (Cherrington 176-84). Given her belief that suffrage’s merits are measured best by acceptance among “leading citizens” rather than the “vicious” masses, there is no small irony in Scott Duniway’s interpretation of these events, which relies on popular voting results and ignores increasing legislative support. Interestingly, Scott Duniway omitted this section when this speech was reprinted in Path Breaking in 1914. Perhaps this reflects the declining salience of increasingly dated historical events. Perhaps it also reflects a desire not to appear foolish in light of subsequent events, which built toward national prohibition with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 (Cherrington 249-364).">47\ There were, in the years 1886-7<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_48_52" id="identifier_48_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Inexplicably (but clearly intentionally, as the date is repeated a few paragraphs hence), PE says “in the year 1896.” However, Cherrington records no noteworthy temperance battles in Washington that year, and Larson reports that the territory’s next suffrage campaign did not occur until 1897-98 (“Washington” 55). Perhaps this is an unpardonably sloppy attempt to apply the lessons of an earlier time and different place to the events of 1896 in Idaho.">48, a few women in the Territory of Washington, who, after they had gotten the ballot, which came to them unawares and unbidden, became unduly intoxicated with their new possession. And these women unwisely yielded to the counsels of a few peripatetic women<, non-voters> from the East, who, learning that Washington’s women had been endowed with ballots, sought them out (on a handsome salary) and induced them to permit idealists and cranks to use their ballots as cat’s-paws, in a vain attempt to rake their own chestnuts from the fires of politics. But the majority of even these women long ago discovered, under the humiliation of the great defeat that followed, which logically acted to deprive49 them, and through them all women <of Washington>, of their right to vote–which they had just learned to prize–that what women need, for the purification of the race, is not arbitrary laws50 for the coercion of men, but liberty for themselves, that they may gradually rise above the conditions of subjugation against which their forefathers rebelled, under which, as servants without wages, taxed without representation and governed without consent, so many mothers are compelled to rear a progeny of drunkards.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_51_52" id="identifier_51_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In IDS this paragraph reads: “Many women in Washington Territory who had never lifted voice or finger to secure the ballot before it came to them, but who unwisely yielded to the counsels of women from the East, who sought them out on a handsome salary to induce them to use their newly found ballots as cats-paws in the hands of idealists and cranks, have discovered, under the humiliation of the great defeat that has deprived them temporarily of the ballots they had just learned to prize, that what women need for the purification of the race is not an arbitrary law for the coercion of men, but liberty for themselves that they may rise above the conditions of subjugation against which their forefathers rebelled, and under which they are now so often compelled to mother a progeny of drunkards.” This obviously is a much-abridged version of her argument in “Ballots and Bullets.”">51 In Wyoming, where \the\ women had been voters long enough to learn /a modicum of political/ wisdom before the prohibition craze became the fashion, better counsels prevailed, and no such innovation exists52, to act as a boomerang against their ballots, /as destroyed the suffrages of Washington’s women. (This is equally true today of Colorado, Utah and Idaho <and other Pacific Coast States>, where women are voters«, now».)/ I am making no remonstrance53 against prohibition, per se. {since} I realize that everybody has a right to ride a pet hobby, \even when riding it to its death,\ provided, of course, /that/ he doesn’t strike down other people’s liberties54 with the hoofs of his hobby horse. But I wish I might convince every man in this convention that most55 women realize, as keenly as {any of} you do, the fact that every woman who sits behind the prison bars of her present political environment, lifting her manacled hands to men and saying, “Give us the ballot and we’ll56 put down your whiskey,” is not only telling a falsehood57 (since all the force of bullets58, to say naught of ballots, would59 never do it unless men should voluntarily put it down themselves), merely60 offers to most men the strongest possible inducement61 to answer, “Very well! We’ll see that you don’t get the ballot at all, if you intend to use it as a whip! /We don’t propose to let women carry a whip hand over us!/” «What the women are asking, gentlemen; I mean» What the great majority of the women of the Pacific Northwest are asking<, gentlemen>62 ; women who have no time to spend in getting up63 ice cream festivals to induce men to fill their stomachs with an indigestible compound–for a financial consideration–in the interest of a prohibition64 fund–festivals that send them to the dramshop for an antidote65 ; /what/ women /are asking/ who study66 the practical side of every question; women who67 are not sent out as the paid representatives of any set of men or /women, or of/ any political party, is that you will engraft into the fundamental law of this commonwealth68 a clause in your chapter on suffrages69 and elections {providing} that, other things70 being equal, except the right to bear arms, which custom71 accords to men72, and the far73 more perilous right to bear <soldiers as> armor-bearers (which nature imposes upon women)74, there shall be no restrictions placed upon the /right of/ suffrage on account of /the incident of/ sex. {Do this wise and patriotic thing, gentlemen of the convention, and your constitution will be adopted by spontaneous combustion. You will put power in the hands of your wives and mothers with which as a home element they can level blows of irresistible strength at the demon of polygamy that now menaces their daughters in many sections of the southern and eastern portion of this rising commonwealth.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_75_52" id="identifier_75_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In a bid to preserve the Mormon theocracy against an influx of Gentiles, Utah women had gotten the vote in 1870. Scott Duniway strongly opposed the “great and growing evil of Mormonism,” likening polygamy–the “Utah sin”–to prostitution. But she just as strongly opposed “one-sexed” efforts (which came to fruition in 1887) to curb Mormon political power by disenfranchising Mormon women (she did not object to disenfranchising Mormons of both sexes), and argued that “the unhallowed institution” could be overthrown only when “the wifehood and motherhood of America have the ballot” (Weatherford 103-05, 142; New Northwest 25 Aug. 1876, 15 Jan. 1880, 23 Dec. 1880, 15 Dec. 1881).">75} \While I can and do point to Wyoming, where {the} women have voted for {the last} two decades, in proof that women’s ballots will not bring prohibition; and also to Washington, where it is now known that the76 majority of {the} women refused, «at the election of 1896,» to use the ballot as a whip to coerce men into leading strings as though they were little children, I must77 say{, without prospect of contradiction,} that women are quite as much opposed to drunkenness in husbands as men are opposed to drunkenness in wives. But never, until mothers, everywhere, are78 free and equal with fathers79 before the law, can they cease, every now and then, to produce a man80 of such weak moral fiber that he is81 unable to resist temptation.\ Oh, gentlemen! When you grant us the right of suffrage we shall82 be<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_83_52" id="identifier_83_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In IDS, this paragraph begins: “Grant us the right of suffrage, gentlemen, and we will not only pledge to you our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor in aiding you to adopt this constitution, but we will, when it is adopted, feel”">83 so proud of you and of ourselves that we will proclaim the glad tidings of our freedom among all the <crowded> /states and/ cities {and countries} of the East, and by so doing /we can84/ turn the tide of immigration into Idaho, just as we exultantly turned it into85 Washington <Territory> during the {period of} three and a half years86 of her greatest prosperity, when her women were voters; <just as we will do some day for Oregon;> just as we will do again for Washington, when she again becomes “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” as she was known to be before her women’s ballots were beaten down by the inevitable recoil of prohibition boomerangs. {But, gentlemen!} Too well I know87 there is no other attribute of our humanity<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_88_52" id="identifier_88_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="IDS: “dogma” for “attribute of our humanity” that dies so hard as tyranny. I know how prone many men are to delude themselves with the fancy that they are “heads of the family.” ((In IDS, this sentence reads: “I know that many of you, if married, may delude yourselves with the idea that you are ‘heads of the family.’”">88 I know how persistently many89 wives–cunning diplomats–foster this transparent delusion.90 Men’s91 vanity and self-love are fed upon this sophistry/, although they fully understand that it is sophistry/. Men are very human. God made them to match the women.92 We know every one of our opponents’93 threadbare arguments against our liberties by heart. You say we “mustn’t vote because we cannot fight,”94 forgetting, or pretending to forget, that life’s hardest battles, everywhere, are fought by the mothers of men in giving existence to the race.95 You say, “women do not want to vote,”96 when all the opportunities we have ever had to vote have been as freely utilized by us as by yourselves.97 You say, “If women want the ballot, let them ask for it,”98 when we have been asking for it, {for} lo, these forty years! You say, “bad women will vote,” when you well know that bad men vote, and claim the ballot for their protection{, while you do not say them nay}. /Why deny protection to one class of human sinners and accord it to another?/ You say we “must not99 sit on juries,” though100 ever and anon a woman is to be tried /by a jury/. May we not look forward, gentlemen,101 to the day when a woman102 may be tried by a jury of her103 peers? {I do not mean that all, or nearly all of you will say these harsh, illogical things. Quite a number of you I know to be in favor of woman’s full and free enfranchisement; and I sincerely hope that all of you will be so convinced of the justice of our plea that you will not hesitate to make your names immortal as the first body of constitution writers under the sun who have ever dared to be wholly just to the mothers of the race. But, oh! gentlemen, if, in the extreme caution that induces other men to uphold their own prejudices in opposition to the aspirations of women, you do not dare to grant us the free boon of full enfranchisement, we have another plan to lay before you which we believe and hope will not fail to meet your unqualified approval. Remember that we ask you, appealing to your chivalry, your sense of justice and patriotism; appealing to your spirit of liberty and honor, to grant us, as a part of the fundamental law, our free, unquestioned right to vote. But, if you will not grant this request, then we pray you, as a compromise with your consciences and with us, to put a clause in your chapter on suffrage and elections providing that the Legislature may, at any session, pass a bill extending the elective franchise to women on equal terms with men. Surely you will not compel your wives and mothers, under a Constitutional law of the State of Idaho, which you have denied us, the right to any voice in framing or adopting; surely you will not compel us to go before the ignorant and prejudiced voting classes of men, with our hands on our mouths and our mouths in the dust; beseeching half-fledged boys, who have just attained their majority and have not ceased struggling with weak moustaches; or praying foreign-born voters, who cannot speak our language or comprehend the first principles of our free institutions–surely you will not so humiliate us, and so outrage our sense of justice as to remand us to these persons, only to be sent away, when we ask for liberty, with a brutal No, as has been so often done in older States when we asked these voters to amend their constitutions! You have opportunity to so frame your Constitution, in the very inception of your government, that your picked men of the Legislature may be allowed to sit in final judgment upon our plea for ballots.}<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_104_52" id="identifier_104_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="PB condenses the preceding two paragraphs, and omits the political strategizing, as follows: “Women who seek the ballot for liberty’s sake are not proposing to govern men. We are seeking for an opportunity to govern ourselves. We appeal to your sense of justice, your chivalry, your patriotism, your honor, as we ask you to grant to us, as part of the fundamental law, our free, unquestioned right to a voice in the government which we are taxed to maintain and to whose laws we are held amenable.” PE does the same, only ending more simply with “unquestioned right to vote.”">104 The eyes of the world are upon these /new states and/ territories /of the Pacific Northwest/. The freedom-loving spirit of our Western men is our proudest boast.105 Shall we, the women of this border land, who have shared alike your trials and /your/ triumphs–shall we not be permitted to go up to the national capital106 \next winter,\ bearing aloft{, like the women of our neighboring Territory Wyoming,} the banner of our freedom? Shall we not have the proud distinction of proclaiming to the older states of the Union that the chivalry and honor of our fathers, husbands, and sons outrank«s» their own? May we not tell the world that these are the men who scorn to accept any rights for themselves which they would deny to their mothers, sweethearts, wives, sisters and daughters?<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_107_52" id="identifier_107_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="IDS replaces the preceding two sentences with “Shall we not have the power to proclaim everywhere the chivalry and honor of our own Constitution makers, and tell the world that they scorned to accept a right for themselves which they would deny to the mothers of men?”">107 {Will you not so equip us with the watchword of liberty that we can inspire all the world to turn its eyes upon Idaho as the promised land–the land of free women and brave men?} /I pause just here to read a note, brought to me from the audience a moment ago by a page./ “What do you woman suffragists {who are not prohibitionists} propose to do with the whisky traffic?” asks /the writer,/ an excellent and earnest little woman, /whom I recognize as one/ who has worked hard for prohibition because she has had no other channel in which to work, and thereby ease the struggling spirit within her /which is clamoring for something practical to do/. Equal Suffragists108 answer: “Tax whiskey, and all other intoxicants, as heavily as their traffic will bear{, not so heavily as to amount to prohibition, for experience proves that the ends of justice are thus defeated, for then the dealers will sell and pay no tax at all.} /Control and regulate that which you cannot destroy./” I know all the arguments against the liquor109 tax by heart. Time was when I supposed it110 was what men call it, a license. But study of the question111 long ago convinced me that it is a tax.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_112_52" id="identifier_112_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="PE: “convinced me of my mistake”; IDS: “convinced me of the mistake”. Scott Duniway had offered a resolution condemning license as a governmental “indulgence . . . to commit sin” at the Oregon State Temperance Alliance convention in 1875 (“Progressive Party Luncheon” n. 18). She explained why a license is more accurately seen as a tax, and why she had changed her mind, in the fourth of her seven-part series on “The Temperance Problem” (New Northwest 29 July 1886).">112 {Intemperance is among us like an overflowing, dark, deep and pestilential river.} Liquors are sold because men demand them, drink them and pay for them. This demand is a perennial fountain, rising in the desires of the consumer. The liquor traffic is like a mighty river that is always flowing, flowing, obedient to a cause. You may change its channels here and there, <or drive it into hiding now and then,> but you cannot stop its flow.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_113_52" id="identifier_113_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="IDS replaces these four sentences with: “Liquors are sold because men buy them, and the river of intemperance flows because it has a perennial fountain in the desires of the consumer. Men who drink immoderately are not the chief source of its supplies. But, no matter whence the supplies come, the river is always flowing, flowing. You may obstruct it here and there, but you cannot stop its flow.”">113 At114 the mouth of the Mississippi there is an immense swamp. So dark and pestilential is it that yellow fever lurks in its murky edges115 and a green slime crawls upon the top of the stagnant water, among which /poisonous/ reptiles play /at/ hide and seek. “Prohibit the accursed thing!” cries out the theorist. “Don’t tamper, or temporize with it /in any way/, but put it down! /Stop its flow!/” Vain mandate, vain prescription, vain endeavor!116 You may117 cover the slum and slime with a prohibition plaster/; but/, be the plaster118 ever so strong, the virus will /still/ exude; or, worse /still/, it will burrow deep and yet deeper119 into hidden places, marking its track by /increased/ desolation and death. “Then, what is the /final/ remedy?” /is asked by questioning ones, who are not yet willing to be convinced that they can err in judgment./ “Build levees upon the banks of the liquor traffic,” says science, and so says common sense.120 Regulate what you cannot destroy. You build houses to shield yourselves from the cold and heat. You prepare safeguards against fire and flood, and you must protect yourselves against intoxicants by confining their traffic to a margin as narrow as will contain their flow. You must keep the dykes high and in order.121 This is “high license,” falsely so called. It is a levee upon the banks of the stream, of which even those /engaged in the traffic,/ who use the current122 for financial reasons, can recognize the need/; and they will help you to maintain the dykes/. <[The foregoing is a declaration that, in the light of recent events, may well be deemed prophetic. For are not liquor men engaged at present in regulating the traffic as never before?]123 > Give us this124 levee, gentlemen, and, above everything else,125 give us126 the ballot, with which to /help you/ build it high and strong, and we will help you build most loyally.127 /Our plea is against prohibition of the gravest sort; the prohibition which prohibits us from using our right to vote. We ask that you remove this128 disability; to prohibit us from voting no more forever. We ask «for» nothing but our right to use our voice<s, as your companions and co- workers,> in making the laws under which we, as well as you, must live; laws which we are taxed to maintain, to which we, equally with yourselves, are held amenable. <We could not rule men if we would, and would not if we could.> Here, gentlemen, we rest our case, in the serene belief that the first decade129 of the twentieth century will witness the full and free enfranchisement of every law-abiding woman of this great galaxy of new and vigorous young states of the Pacific Northwest, which need claim no higher distinction than to be forever known as the <original> Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave./ <Hoping that every voter who receives this document will weigh its contents with such care as its importance demands, and feeling that all such will vote “Yes” on every constitutional amendment which comes before them in behalf of human liberty, just as they would wish us to vote for their enfranchisement if the power were ours to withhold or bestow it, and with serene reliance upon the liberty-loving, chivalrous nature of every public-spirited man, I shall now and always appeal for the inalienable right of self-government for every man and woman who obeys the new Commandment, given to us by our Elder Brother, “That ye love one another.”><a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cequal-rights-for-all%e2%80%9d-july-17-1889/#footnote_130_52" id="identifier_130_52" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The form in which Path Breaking is printed suggests that this paragraph concludes the speech (three asterisks, ostensibly dividing the speech text from Scott Duniway’s surrounding narrative, appear in the line following this paragraph). However, several factors, including the fact that it does not appear in either of the earlier versions and its mention of those who “receive this document,” strongly suggest that this paragraph was appended later, quite possibly in November, 1899, when this speech was reproduced in the first issue of a monthly bulletin called “The Campaign Leaflet,” which would be distributed widely during Oregon’s third campaign for suffrage in 1900.">130 NOTES In the spring of 1886, while on a lecture tour of southern Idaho, Abigail and Willis filed claims on two large tracts of land near the villages of Hailey and Antelope Station. Their motives were largely speculative: They hoped that irrigation schemes and a proposed railroad route, to which Harvey Scott had tipped them, would pay off. Wearied by political brawling and Clara’s death, and perhaps envisioning a chance to make her cooperative economic ideals a reality, Abigail was persuaded to sell the New Northwest. In July, Ben, who missed his ranching days, and sons moved to Idaho while she remained in Portland to finish out the paper’s last year of publication. She spent two weeks in Idaho in January, 1887, but quickly returned to the warmth of her Clay Street house. Thereafter she visited only during summers. Her hopes for the Idaho properties never materialized and by the spring of 1892 she offered them for sale (Moynihan, Rebel 162-63, 187, 189-90; cf. L. Johnson 514; Kessler, “Siege of the Citadels: Search” 145; Richey, “Hard Scrabble” 92). The vote was overwhelming. Ironically, only Custer County, in which the Duniway ranch was located, voted against the amendment (Schwantes 164). 21 Jan. 1897. Unwelcome in the Idaho campaign and seeking to restore her journalistic voice, Scott Duniway joined this new weekly periodical, published by her “warm friend” Frances E. Gotshall, as editor in August, 1895. Unlike most prohibitionists who would have nothing to do with Scott Duniway, Gotshall, an officer in the state W.C.T.U. who also believed firmly that suffrage was just and right, admired her and often acted as conciliator between the two “warring factions” of Abigail and her allies on one hand and the W.C.T.U. and the prohibitionist wing of O.S.W.S.A. on the other (Montague 69; Kessler, “Siege of the Citadels: Search” 145-46). It is a measure of the degree to which Scott Duniway and the Pacific Empire’s editorial outlook had diverged that, even though Gotshall had rejoined the editorial staff by this point, the newspaper contained the following disclaimer: “We print this week, by request, an address by Mrs. A. S. Duniway, but in so doing we wish to distinctly state that we assume no responsibility for the sentiments contained therein.” A. Duniway, Path Breaking 130-43. This version (including the faults discussed below), in turn, reappeared in Idaho Yesterdays 34.2 (1990): 21-27. Path Breaking records that the address was delivered on July 16 and reprinted in the Statesman on July 18 (131; the Woman’s Tribune also reported that it was given on the 16th [27 July 1889]). However, the Statesman version appears in two parts, on July 19 and 20, and records that the speech itself was delivered on July 17. William Horace Clagett (1838-1901): born Upper Marlboro, Maryland; moved with father to Keokuk, Iowa, 1850; attended public schools; studied law in Keokuk and at the law school in Albany, New York; admitted to bar, 1858, and commenced practice in Keokuk; moved to Carson City, Nevada, 1861, and Humboldt, Nevada, 1862; member, territorial house of representatives, 1862-63, and state house of representatives, 1864-65; practiced law, Virginia City, Nevada, Helena, Montana, and Deer Lodge, Montana; Republican delegate from Montana to 42nd Congress, 1871-73; authored legislation eventuating in creation of Yellowstone National Park; denied reelection; resumed law practice in Deer Lodge, Denver, Deadwood (Dakota Territory), Portland, and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; president, Idaho constitutional convention, 1889; unsuccessful candidate, U.S. Senate from Idaho, 1891, 1895; resumed law practice in Spokane, Washington (Biographical Directory; “William H. Clagett“). IDS: “Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention:” IDS : “to you” for “in your presence” ISD: “whom you have graciously accorded a hearing.” Both Scott Duniway and W.C.T.U. President Henrietta Skelton addressed the convention (Myres 228). ISD: “began” ISD: “by the spirit of liberty” for “with the desire for liberty which now inspires them” ISD: “the” ISD: “the” IDS, in certain error: “never any” IDS: “liberty” for “the fundamental principles of a true democracy” IDS: “the proposed incoming states, in which I am proud to claim a permanent interest” for “these yet new«er» states of the Pacific Northwest” IDS, in probable error: “even” Probably intended: “consequence” Supra, n. 1. IDS: “women” IDS: “we” IDS inserts “to-wit:” IDS: “the” PB: “growing” IDS: “among us concerning our own enfranchisement” for “of sentiment in our ranks concerning the justice of our plea for our own enfranchisement” IDS: “When first the idea was placed” IDS “large numbers of them” for “a good many” IDS: “growing” IDS: “do something which all men might pet and pat and praise them for attempting” for “perform some public act for which press, people and pulpit would praise and pat and pet and pay them” IDS: “their long repressed and naturally emotional sensations”for “the repressed ambition” IDS: “was not” The IDS version of these five paragraphs (omitted from PB) is somewhat different in style, if not theme, as follows: “It is the easiest thing on earth to make a political speech. Anybody can recount the horrors of drunkenness and the evil influences of the saloon. And many a woman who had never before jingled a coin in her pocket that she could call her own found an easy avenue for making money in this new departure. I am not blaming them for earning money. I am simply stating facts. Money is the motive power that moves the world. It is more potent than religion and more powerful even than love. No organization can long exist without it. It is as potent a factor with the church as with its adversary, the saloon. We all know it is not lost sight of by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and I may frankly add that the Woman Suffrage Association, as well as this honorable body, is obliged to admit and consider its claims. I am not complaining, but simply stating facts, that you may see that women are not blind to the financial situation. Hitherto their opportunities have been sadly circumscribed in money matters; and it is not to be wondered at that they have sought willingly the first avenues that have opened to them for making money by methods wherein they might work and travel, and at the same time receive the pay and plaudits of men. Multitudes of the great rank and file of prohibition women are not to be included in this category. It is of the leaders I speak, and I beg you, gentlemen, to remember that in pursuing this hobby and never losing sight of its emoluments, they are only following the example of men engaged in the same business. Be patient with them. They have plenty of material in sight in every town they visit upon which to expend their eloquence; nor can you expect they will cease to harp upon it as long as they can make it pay. Of the philosophy of prohibition I need say but little. Every thinking man or woman who analyzes the subject closely reaches one conclusion, and that is that coercion, or any species of arbitrary law, never yet restrained any man in his vices.” IDS: “offered for sale” for “he wants to buy” IDS: “about” for “between the prohibition of liquor-selling and” IDS: “guns, knives” IDS renders this sentence: “If I were the omnipotent power, I should not hesitate with my finite conception of things, to prohibit everything that is evil.” PB: “should” IDS: “want, woe” IDS: “our community” for “any element of our humanity” IDS: “He won’t” for “that this is not His plan” IDS: “nor has the very large majority of American women whom I have the honor to represent” IDS: “wish” IDS: “Michigan, Massachusetts, Vermont, Oregon, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania” IDS: “it” for “its efficacy as a reformatory temperance measure” IDS: “few” These “defeats” were less definitive than Scott Duniway implies. The Connecticut legislature voted in 1880 to submit the question to popular vote, but the measure failed when the Senate refused necessary action in 1882. In Michigan, resolutions failed in the legislature in 1881 (when it obtained a simple majority but failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority) and 1883, but passed in 1887, where it was defeated at the polls. Rhode Island adopted constitutional prohibition in 1886 and repealed it in 1889. The Oregon legislature acted favorably in 1885 and 1887, submitting an amendment which was defeated at the polls in 1887. A measure failed in the Massachusetts legislature in 1881 but succeeded in 1887 and 1889, where it was defeated at the polls. In Pennsylvania, the lower house approved submission in 1881, the Senate not until 1889, at which time the public rejected it. The people of Washington rejected a constitutional amendment in 1889. While the Vermont legislature rejected a submission resolution in 1883, the state remained under a statutory prohibition first enacted in 1852 and strengthened in 1881; it did not back-slide until 1902, when it reverted to local option. In addition, during this same ten-year period, prohibition amendments were adopted in Kansas (1880), Maine (1884), and North and South Dakota (1889); Iowa voters approved an amendment, only to have it subsequently overturned by the courts; in Ohio (1883) voters approved a prohibition amendment and defeated a license amendment, with the peculiar effect that the latter nullified the former by virtue of a requirement that the former receive a majority of all votes cast in the election; and the territory of Alaska was placed under Prohibition by President Grover Cleveland (1884). Finally, substantial prohibition agitation in at least 14 other states typically achieved increasing success in the legislatures even if ultimately rejected in popular votes (Cherrington 176-84). Given her belief that suffrage’s merits are measured best by acceptance among “leading citizens” rather than the “vicious” masses, there is no small irony in Scott Duniway’s interpretation of these events, which relies on popular voting results and ignores increasing legislative support. Interestingly, Scott Duniway omitted this section when this speech was reprinted in Path Breaking in 1914. Perhaps this reflects the declining salience of increasingly dated historical events. Perhaps it also reflects a desire not to appear foolish in light of subsequent events, which built toward national prohibition with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919 (Cherrington 249-364). Inexplicably (but clearly intentionally, as the date is repeated a few paragraphs hence), PE says “in the year 1896.” However, Cherrington records no noteworthy temperance battles in Washington that year, and Larson reports that the territory’s next suffrage campaign did not occur until 1897-98 (“Washington” 55). Perhaps this is an unpardonably sloppy attempt to apply the lessons of an earlier time and different place to the events of 1896 in Idaho. PE: “which naturally deprived” PE: “an arbitrary law” In IDS this paragraph reads: “Many women in Washington Territory who had never lifted voice or finger to secure the ballot before it came to them, but who unwisely yielded to the counsels of women from the East, who sought them out on a handsome salary to induce them to use their newly found ballots as cats-paws in the hands of idealists and cranks, have discovered, under the humiliation of the great defeat that has deprived them temporarily of the ballots they had just learned to prize, that what women need for the purification of the race is not an arbitrary law for the coercion of men, but liberty for themselves that they may rise above the conditions of subjugation against which their forefathers rebelled, and under which they are now so often compelled to mother a progeny of drunkards.” This obviously is a much-abridged version of her argument in “Ballots and Bullets.” IDS: “has been introduced” IDS: “fight” IDS: “the principles of liberty” for “other people’s liberties” PB: “the majority of” IDS: “that we may” for “and we’ll” IDS: “an untruth” IDS: “arms” PB: “could” PB: “but actually” IDS: “the strongest possible inducement to most men” In IDS, this paragraph begins: “What the women ask, gentlemen, the great majority of the women of the territories are asking for I mean;” IDS: “running to” for “getting up” PE: “the W.C.T.U.” for “a prohibition” IDS says simply: “an indigestible compound for financial consideration–that sends them to the dramshop for an antidote” IDS: “look upon” IDS: “subject and” for “question; women who” IDS: “Idaho” for “this commonwealth” IDS: “suffrage” IDS: “rights and qualifications” IDS: “nature” IDS: “man” IDS: “still” IDS substitutes “which the same inexorable power assigns to woman” In a bid to preserve the Mormon theocracy against an influx of Gentiles, Utah women had gotten the vote in 1870. Scott Duniway strongly opposed the “great and growing evil of Mormonism,” likening polygamy–the “Utah sin”–to prostitution. But she just as strongly opposed “one-sexed” efforts (which came to fruition in 1887) to curb Mormon political power by disenfranchising Mormon women (she did not object to disenfranchising Mormons of both sexes), and argued that “the unhallowed institution” could be overthrown only when “the wifehood and motherhood of America have the ballot” (Weatherford 103-05, 142; New Northwest 25 Aug. 1876, 15 Jan. 1880, 23 Dec. 1880, 15 Dec. 1881). IDS: “for three and a half years a” for “it is now known that the” IDS: “do” IDS begins this sentence: “And when women are everywhere” IDS: “men” IDS: “they will cease to rear children” for “can they cease, every now and then, to produce a man” IDS: “they are” PE: “will” In IDS, this paragraph begins: “Grant us the right of suffrage, gentlemen, and we will not only pledge to you our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor in aiding you to adopt this constitution, but we will, when it is adopted, feel” PE: “will” IDS: “directed it to” for “turned it into” In IDS, this paragraph, following this point, concludes: “when we could do so consistently, because Washington was then ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.’” IDS: “I well know” IDS: “dogma” for “attribute of our humanity” that dies so hard as tyranny. I know how prone many men are to delude themselves with the fancy that they are “heads of the family.” ((In IDS, this sentence reads: “I know that many of you, if married, may delude yourselves with the idea that you are ‘heads of the family.’” IDS: “your” IDS: “persuade you that you are the supreme power in their households” for “foster this transparent delusion” IDS: “Your” In IDS, these two sentences are replaced with: “For you are very human; quite as much so as ourselves; and we are by no means perfect.” IDS: “your” for “our opponents’” IDS: “You say we must fight if we vote;” An allusion to poet Joaquin Miller’s “The Bravest Battle” (198). One of her favorites, Abigail would recite it in “Woman in Oregon History” (1899), “How to Win the Ballot” (1899), and “Home and Mother” (1914). IDS: “You say we do not wish to vote” IDS: “in that direction as your own” for “by us as by yourselves” IDS: “You say if we wish the ballot let us ask for it” IDS: “mustn’t” IDS: “when” IDS: “May we not, gentlemen, look forward” IDS: “women” for “a woman” IDS: “our” PB condenses the preceding two paragraphs, and omits the political strategizing, as follows: “Women who seek the ballot for liberty’s sake are not proposing to govern men. We are seeking for an opportunity to govern ourselves. We appeal to your sense of justice, your chivalry, your patriotism, your honor, as we ask you to grant to us, as part of the fundamental law, our free, unquestioned right to a voice in the government which we are taxed to maintain and to whose laws we are held amenable.” PE does the same, only ending more simply with “unquestioned right to vote.” IDS: “the West has long passed into a proverb” for “our Western men is our proudest boast” IDS: “Washington” for “the national capital” IDS replaces the preceding two sentences with “Shall we not have the power to proclaim everywhere the chivalry and honor of our own Constitution makers, and tell the world that they scorned to accept a right for themselves which they would deny to the mothers of men?” IDS: “We” IDS: “whisky” IDS: “the tax on liquors” for “it” IDS: “subject” PE: “convinced me of my mistake”; IDS: “convinced me of the mistake”. Scott Duniway had offered a resolution condemning license as a governmental “indulgence . . . to commit sin” at the Oregon State Temperance Alliance convention in 1875 (“Progressive Party Luncheon” n. 18). She explained why a license is more accurately seen as a tax, and why she had changed her mind, in the fourth of her seven-part series on “The Temperance Problem” (New Northwest 29 July 1886). IDS replaces these four sentences with: “Liquors are sold because men buy them, and the river of intemperance flows because it has a perennial fountain in the desires of the consumer. Men who drink immoderately are not the chief source of its supplies. But, no matter whence the supplies come, the river is always flowing, flowing. You may obstruct it here and there, but you cannot stop its flow.” PB: “Near” IDS: “the marshes” for “its murky edges” IDS: “Vain hope, vain mandate, vain endeavor.” IDS: “If you” IDS: “it” for “the plaster” IDS: “deeper and deeper” for “deep and yet deeper” IDS renders this sentence as two: “Science says ‘Build levees upon its banks.’ And so says common sense.” IDS replaces the preceding three sentences with: “Confine the stream to a limit as narrow as will contain its flow, and keep the dykes high and in order!” IDS: “stream” This editorial interpolation was added when Scott Duniway was preparing the speech for republication in Path Breaking. IDS: “the” IDS: “oh” for “above everything else” IDS: “woman” IDS: “right royally” for “most loyally”. The IDS version ends here. PE: “you to remove that” for “that you remove this,” PE: “dawn” for “first decade” The form in which Path Breaking is printed suggests that this paragraph concludes the speech (three asterisks, ostensibly dividing the speech text from Scott Duniway’s surrounding narrative, appear in the line following this paragraph). However, several factors, including the fact that it does not appear in either of the earlier versions and its mention of those who “receive this document,” strongly suggest that this paragraph was appended later, quite possibly in November, 1899, when this speech was reproduced in the first issue of a monthly bulletin called “The Campaign Leaflet,” which would be distributed widely during Oregon’s third campaign for suffrage in 1900.
U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE – January 24, 1889
The morning after she had admonished her sisters in “Ballots and Bullets,” Scott Duniway accompanied eight other representatives of the N.W.S.A1 to Capitol Hill, to testify once again before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. The text is taken from the official committee report.2 Gentlemen of the committee, I had thought to offer a little […]
The morning after she had admonished her sisters in “Ballots and Bullets,” Scott Duniway accompanied eight other representatives of the N.W.S.A1 to Capitol Hill, to testify once again before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage. The text is taken from the official committee report.2 Gentlemen of the committee, I had thought to offer a little apology for the seeming temerity of my coming before you on such an occasion, presumably to instruct you in the law, but I am happy to state that the able paper read by our delegate from Missouri (Mrs. Minor)<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-committee-on-woman-suffrage-january-24-1889/#footnote_3_4270" id="identifier_3_4270" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Virginia Louisa Minor (1824-1894): born Caroline County, Virginia; daughter of Warner and Maria (Timberlake) Minor; moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, when 2; little known of childhood and education; married distant cousin, attorney Francis Minor, 1843; after year in Mississippi, settled in St. Louis, 1844; only child, Francis Gilmer, born 1852, died at 14 in shooting accident; despite Virginia roots, during Civil War joined St. Louis Ladies Union Aid Society, later principle auxiliary of Western Sanitary Commission; first Missouri woman to take public stand for suffrage; petitioned state legislature, 1867; when rejected, 89-5, organized Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri, 1867; first president, re-elected annually for five years; resigned presidency 1871, when W.S.A.M. affiliated with American Woman Suffrage Association, because she personally allied with National Woman Suffrage Association; first president of St. Louis branch, N.W.S.A, organized 1879; after unification, 1890, president of new state branch of N.A.W.S.A. until 1892, when ill health compelled retirement; in speeches and pamphlets, argued that newly-passed 14th Amendment gave women the right to vote, 1869; attempted to register to vote in St. Louis, 1872; when registrar Reese Happersett denied her application, she (represented by Francis) sued; trial court, Missouri Supreme Court, and unanimous U.S. Supreme Court (in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 [1875]) found against her, ruling that voting was not an inherent right of citizenship; honorary vice president, Interstate Woman Suffrage Convention, 1892; “spoke frequently before legislative and Congressional committees, where her intelligence and charm made her an effective advocate”; died at 70 in St. Louis, from liver abscess; buried without clergy, who, she said, had opposed her life’s work (Pinkney). Scott Duniway also discusses Minor’s case in “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex.”">3 has made that apology unnecessary, and I shall proceed at once to give historic facts. In the year 1883, amid the mingled acclaim of booming guns and ringing bells, it was announced to all our people that the legislative assembly of Washington Territory had passed a bill, and the governor had approved the act, enfranchising women. Everything went well with these newly-enfranchised citizens for a time, but a change in administration was followed by a change in our territorial judiciary, and the result was that means were soon discovered whereby a flaw or technicality in the construction of the law enabled them to pronounce it unconstitutional, the ground taken being that the purpose of the bill was not expressed in the title of the act. There were some thirty-five bills in the same condition. We appealed to our Senators from Oregon, one of whom (Mr. Dolph)<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-committee-on-woman-suffrage-january-24-1889/#footnote_4_4270" id="identifier_4_4270" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135). Senator Dolph was present in the gallery at this hearing.">4 I am proud to say, has been grandly re-elected for another six years’ term in this great capital, who has been one of our most consistent champions from the beginning. These gentlemen acceded to our request, and a bill or resolution was passed through the Senate validating all those laws. When the bill came up in the House it was objected to by a gentleman from Virginia, I think, and because there was an objection under parliamentary rule the “omnibus bill” could not be passed unless the clause enfranchising women should be stricken out. Realizing that we were blocked in this manner, and wishing to be law-abiding, however much the laws might oppress us, we went to work to secure the re-enactment of the law, working quietly, and, as we thought, modestly and judiciously, to secure the pledge from the incoming or next-convening legislature that they would re-enact the law. To the surprise of our opponents that legislature, which had been elected previously by the votes of women largely (of course we do not overlook the help and co-operation of the men), re-enacted the law, this time making no mistake about the title. Again the universal sound of acclaim went forth throughout our borders, and everywhere we sounded pæans of praise to the chivalric and patriotic spirit that had moved the members of the legislature to again recognize our rights. Time went on, and at the next general election one woman’s vote, among the many whose votes were received, was refused. I allude to Nevada Bloomer, whose case is now upon the docket of the supreme court. Mrs. Bloomer brought suit for the recognition of her right to vote before the supreme court of the Territory, and the decision was adverse to her claim, the decision being made upon the ground that the Territories have no right to pass a law enfranchising their citizens, or, in other words, that the Territories have no jurisdiction over the the qualifications of their own voters.<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-committee-on-woman-suffrage-january-24-1889/#footnote_5_4270" id="identifier_5_4270" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In a nutshell, the history that Abigail is recounting is as follows: In February, 1887, ruling on a case brought by a gambler who had been indicted by a grand jury that included some women, the territorial supreme court voided the 1883 suffrage statute, which included women, on a technicality. Scott Duniway pointedly criticized this reversal (New Northwest 10 Feb. 1887). When the next legislature, in January, 1888, rectified the defect and reenacted the law, a test case was contrived in which Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, an opponent of suffrage and wife of a saloonkeeper, arranged to have her ballot rejected in a Spokane municipal election and then sued the precinct judges, with the result that the territorial supreme court, in Bloomer v. Todd (3 Wash. Terr. 599 [1888]), voided the new act on the grounds that Congress had not intended to empower the territories to enfranchise women (Larson, “Washington” 54-55; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 1096-98). The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately would dismiss the case in 1891 (145 U.S. 630).">5 Mrs. Minor has already explained to you the absurdities of this decision, and we come to-day strong in the hope that inasmuch as this case, being on the docket, will require years to reach it and woman’s condition in the Territory calls for immediate action, that your honorable committee will at once take such measures as to recognize the wrong to which our sex has been subjected, and will, in the spirit of justice, rebuke this usurpation of the Territorial organic act of Congress, of which usurpation we are made the victims. As our leader, Miss Anthony, informs me that I must not trespass beyond ten minutes, and as it is impossible for a woman to say very much in ten minutes, I gladly give way to others. NOTES Isabella Beecher Hooker, Virginia L. Minor, Alice Stone Blackwell, Laura M. Johns, Olympia Brown, Anna Howard Shaw, Susan B. Anthony, and Harriette R. Shattuck Pages 49-50. I am grateful to Albert von Frank for drawing my attention to this speech, and to Emma Francis Bloomfield for locating it. Virginia Louisa Minor (1824-1894): born Caroline County, Virginia; daughter of Warner and Maria (Timberlake) Minor; moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, when 2; little known of childhood and education; married distant cousin, attorney Francis Minor, 1843; after year in Mississippi, settled in St. Louis, 1844; only child, Francis Gilmer, born 1852, died at 14 in shooting accident; despite Virginia roots, during Civil War joined St. Louis Ladies Union Aid Society, later principle auxiliary of Western Sanitary Commission; first Missouri woman to take public stand for suffrage; petitioned state legislature, 1867; when rejected, 89-5, organized Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri, 1867; first president, re-elected annually for five years; resigned presidency 1871, when W.S.A.M. affiliated with American Woman Suffrage Association, because she personally allied with National Woman Suffrage Association; first president of St. Louis branch, N.W.S.A, organized 1879; after unification, 1890, president of new state branch of N.A.W.S.A. until 1892, when ill health compelled retirement; in speeches and pamphlets, argued that newly-passed 14th Amendment gave women the right to vote, 1869; attempted to register to vote in St. Louis, 1872; when registrar Reese Happersett denied her application, she (represented by Francis) sued; trial court, Missouri Supreme Court, and unanimous U.S. Supreme Court (in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 [1875]) found against her, ruling that voting was not an inherent right of citizenship; honorary vice president, Interstate Woman Suffrage Convention, 1892; “spoke frequently before legislative and Congressional committees, where her intelligence and charm made her an effective advocate”; died at 70 in St. Louis, from liver abscess; buried without clergy, who, she said, had opposed her life’s work (Pinkney). Scott Duniway also discusses Minor’s case in “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex.” Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135). Senator Dolph was present in the gallery at this hearing. In a nutshell, the history that Abigail is recounting is as follows: In February, 1887, ruling on a case brought by a gambler who had been indicted by a grand jury that included some women, the territorial supreme court voided the 1883 suffrage statute, which included women, on a technicality. Scott Duniway pointedly criticized this reversal (New Northwest 10 Feb. 1887). When the next legislature, in January, 1888, rectified the defect and reenacted the law, a test case was contrived in which Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, an opponent of suffrage and wife of a saloonkeeper, arranged to have her ballot rejected in a Spokane municipal election and then sued the precinct judges, with the result that the territorial supreme court, in Bloomer v. Todd (3 Wash. Terr. 599 [1888]), voided the new act on the grounds that Congress had not intended to empower the territories to enfranchise women (Larson, “Washington” 54-55; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 1096-98). The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately would dismiss the case in 1891 (145 U.S. 630).
“BALLOTS AND BULLETS” – January 23, 1889
The controversy that was to preoccupy Scott Duniway for many years and define her place within the suffrage movement concerned prohibition, which was one of a number of reform-oriented movements to gain favor during the last half of the nineteenth century. Joseph Gusfield attributes the rise in anti-liquor sentiment in part to the influx of […]
The controversy that was to preoccupy Scott Duniway for many years and define her place within the suffrage movement concerned prohibition, which was one of a number of reform-oriented movements to gain favor during the last half of the nineteenth century. Joseph Gusfield attributes the rise in anti-liquor sentiment in part to the influx of European immigrants; temperance was a “status issue” for those seeking to curb “undesirable” behaviors among the “lower classes.” Many eastern suffrage leaders, of older stock and from the large cities with heavy concentrations of new arrivals, came to embrace prohibition as well, as part of a gradual shift from principled arguments for suffrage to expediency-based rationales. As justifications grounded in natural rights (i.e., in the ways in which men and women were fundamentally the same as human beings) slowly were supplanted by justifications grounded in women’s moral superiority (i.e., in the ways in which men and women were fundamentally different in character), prohibition became the paradigmatic example of what women would do with the vote. Because she did not drink and openly resented the fact that men of the “lower classes” were enfranchised when women were not, it may seem surprising that Scott Duniway did not embrace the political marriage of prohibition and suffrage. But, save for a brief period early in her adult life, she did not.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_1_50" id="identifier_1_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Moynihan sheds some light on the family background that may have contributed to Scott Duniway’s opinions. Although Grandfather Roelofson had been a teetotaler since his religious conversion in 1795, the Scotts were “moral suasionists rather than prohibitionists,” and the Sons of Temperance, to which Tucker Scott belonged, was “frequently denounced by cold-water Yankees” (ardent New England temperance advocates who settled the nearby town of Tremont, Illinois) as a “secret order” opposed to legal prohibition and even to “true religion” (Rebel 23). The General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church endorsed prohibition in 1883 and national prohibition in 1885, while in 1884 the National Conference of the Unitarian Church merely called “affectionately” on moderate drinkers “to give up such use out of compassion for their weaker brethren” (Cherrington 217, 221-22, 225). This difference likely contributed to Abigail’s drift from the denomination of her childhood to the more moderate Unitarians.">1 As early as 1872, at the anti-suffrage State Temperance Alliance, she had the cheek to advocate suffrage as a prerequisite to prohibition not because women’s votes would outlaw liquor, but because the political and economic freedom realized via suffrage would enable every woman “to settle this prohibition business in her own home and on her own account.”2 Prohibition, she believed, was a matter for character, not law; “sumptuary legislation” would undermine the individual responsibility to be temperate. Scott Duniway’s opposition to legislative prohibition was pragmatic as well as principled. She was convinced that prohibition advocacy would raise the ire of the powerful liquor and related industries, alienate the votes of men, and ultimately doom the cause of suffrage itself. She viewed the burgeoning prohibition agitation of the 1880s and the growing alliance between suffragists and prohibitionists with increasing alarm, and she interpreted a succession of legislative setbacks as vindication of these views, from which she never wavered thereafter.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_3_50" id="identifier_3_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The 1880s witnessed greater state-level agitation for prohibition than had been seen in thirty years, although the measure ultimately failed in three-fourths of cases. The Oregon legislature twice (in 1883 and 1885) approved an amendment, endorsed by the Republican state convention in 1886, which was rejected by voters in the fall of 1887 (Cherrington 216-17, 225-26, 231). Washington Territory adopted local option in 1885 and voted down prohibition four years later (Cherrington 223, 236). Thus, it is not surprising that, as she does here, Abigail attributed the 1884 defeat in Oregon and the 1887-88 reversal of fortune in Washington to those who campaigned loudly for suffrage as a “shortcut to prohibition.”">3 Her outspokenness (even belligerence) on this subject provoked much controversy and earned the enmity of several leaders of “the National.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_4_50" id="identifier_4_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Suffragists and prohibitionists were warming to each other nationally as well. The W.C.T.U., which Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard founded in 1874 and of which she became President in 1879, endorsed “the ballot for woman as a weapon for the protection of her home” in 1880 (Campbell, Man 2: 317). Willard’s Home Protection Party merged with the Prohibition Party in 1882, and Willard persuaded it to endorse woman suffrage in 1882, although this endorsement was withdrawn two years later (Cherrington 167; Campbell, Man 2: 317). N.W.S.A.’s 1887 convention passed a resolution praising the W.C.T.U.’s endorsement of woman suffrage (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 122-23). In April, 1888, Willard joined Anthony, Cady Stanton, and others in testifying before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 137-42). Meanwhile, committed prohibitionists such as Anna Howard Shaw, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby, and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore played increasingly prominent roles in N.W.S.A. Such developments made Scott Duniway fear for the association’s direction. Some measure of jealousy probably also was involved: Prohibitionists–no matter how famous–were jenny-come-lately’s to the suffrage cause. No doubt Abigail would have choked on a subsequent assertion, by the General Secretary of the World League Against Alcoholism, that the W.C.T.U. “pioneered the movement for equal suffrage” (Cherrington 174-75).">4 This speech, delivered before the twenty-first annual N.W.S.A. convention in Washington, D.C., is one of her most important addresses on the topic.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_5_50" id="identifier_5_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway’s autobiography, Path Breaking, and the Sunday Oregonian, September 9, 1906, both date the speech in February. However, History of Woman Suffrage reports that the convention was held on January 21-23 (4: 143).">5 Given her opposition to the organization’s path, her rhetorical situation is tenuous. If her audience was not hostile before Scott Duniway spoke, key segments were after she finished. No trace of controversy can be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, which discreetly reports only that, on the convention’s final day, “Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway (Ore.) described the recent arbitrary and unwarranted disenfranchisement of the women of Washington Territory.”6 However, Scott Duniway’s conflict with Eastern leaders “broke into open war” over this speech, and she got the “cold shoulder.”7 In fact, Anthony roundly rebuked her and shifted allegiance to the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, the superintendent of the W.C.T.U.’s franchise department, who had debuted on the N.W.S.A. platform earlier that very afternoon.8 Scott Duniway adapts to this rhetorical situation perhaps as well as her temperament will allow. Her tone is as conciliatory as she probably can muster: She expresses her affection for her sisters, even those who disagree, acknowledges their right to their own opinions, and apologizes for any pain her message has caused. Moreover, rather than making general arguments against the temperance connection, she invokes her personal experience campaigning for suffrage in the Pacific Northwest. Debating the merits of temperance in abstract, general terms would place Scott Duniway on equal argumentative footing with her opponents. However, basing her arguments on her personal–even private–experience places Scott Duniway in the position of expert vis-à-vis her audience, and her evidence is not so easily disputed or refuted by strangers to the particular circumstances and events she describes. Together, however, these efforts fail. Appeals to personal experience can reinforce a conciliatory tone by implying that differing experiences can lead to differing, but equally valid, opinions. But Scott Duniway cannot bring herself to say this. On the contrary, to her, her personal experience is not relativized or limited because it is subjective but remains, instead, objective evidence of the “truth.” Thus, she can concede, only half-heartedly, that her opponents are entitled to their opinions “even when wrong”! As a result, given her blunt criticism of prohibitionists (at one point she even implies that they are inferior mothers), and Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby in particular, it is understandable that many did not accept her conciliatory gestures as sincere. And her reliance on personal experience sounds less like the sincere observations of a “humble servant” than self-important lecturing by a self-appointed superior. At a reader’s behest, this address was reprinted seventeen years later in the Sunday Oregonian (September 9, 1906). Scott Duniway clearly believed that events in the intervening years had vindicated her: I admit that I have hesitated about offering to the press the vital truths it contains, as I recall the stormy period of which it treats, when it was almost as much as a temperance woman’s life was worth to declare herself opposed to the intemperance of prohibition. But the tide is turning. In the four states where women vote the intoxication of prohibition has given way to the sober responsibilities of a wholly free people, while the only three remaining prohibition states emphatically prohibit the enfranchisement of the daughters of men. I desire in this connection to say to my friends of the W.C.T.U. that I have no quarrel with them whatever. The most of them, except the professional agitators who make their living out of the business, have agreed with my position since their eyes have been opened by defeat. Quite a number of them no longer wear the little knot of white ribbon, insignia of prohibition, which has the same effect on the average voter when women ask for the ballot as a red rag shaken in the face of an infuriated bull. I love them dearly, and respect their sincerity; but the equally sincere demands of the majority of women for liberty compel me to speak the truth, regardless of consequences to myself. Scott Duniway also reprinted this speech in her 1914 autobiography, Path Breaking, from which the text is taken.9 Non-trivial discrepancies between the two versions are indicated as follows: material (typically explanations probably added at the later date) in Path Breaking but absent from the Oregonian version is marked by “<>”; material in the earlier Oregonian version but absent from Path Breaking is marked by “[]”; and differences in treatment of the same material are explained in footnotes. Madam President10: In presenting my theme before this convention, I realize the magnitude of my task as I rise to perform the most irksome and yet the most necessary duty that has ever devolved upon me since the beginning of my public career [in the interest of woman’s enfranchisement]. It is an easy matter to address an assembly like this along the lines which custom has made comparatively popular; but necessity now demands a deviation from established usage; and it has become the duty of an humble leader, coming from the confines of the far Pacific, [whose experience has compelled her] to discover <and divulge the fact> that the present lines of action (as approved by a majority of our beloved and respected co-workers on the Eastern border) is not the policy for the great National Woman Suffrage Association to pursue to win. For this reason, this humble leader must sound an alarm. She sees that our ships are being scuttled, and she would be recreant to every duty to which her sacred obligation calls her, did she hesitate to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and that is what, with the help of God, I shall <try to> do tonight. I confess that I enjoy a controversy with an enemy. I like to puncture his pet prejudices and play havoc with his hoary sophistries. But when I am called, by the sacredness of my trust, to differ from friends whom I love, and show them that their zeal is out-running their discretion; that their efforts are acting as boomerangs to batter down our own breast-works and lay them in ruins at our feet, I realize the peril of my position, and would gladly delegate my duty to another, if one could be found who would undertake to perform it. [You are all aware that the cause of woman’s enfranchisement prior to the year 1884, had made more rapid advancement in the Pacific Northwest than in any other portion of our great national bailiwick. When my work began, in 1871, there was not within all our borders a married woman who had a legal right to own the clothes that formed even her bridal trousseau. It is true that the pioneer women of the whole of Oregon had enjoyed, from 1850 to 1852, the privilege of acquiring and possessing in their own right–when married–from 160 to 320 virgin acres of the public domain; a right granted them under the specifications of a congressional act known as the Donation Land Law.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_11_50" id="identifier_11_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">11 And to this law, from whose benefit many men and women possess homes today, who would otherwise be homeless, we doubtless owe much of the spirit of freedom among our women, as well as much of men’s respect for our inter-dependence with themselves which, until recently overthrown by a new idea, was bringing us to the ballot box as rapidly as Legislative wheels could revolve.] Oregon is the mother state of the Pacific Coast, and originally embraced the present states of Washington, Idaho and much of Montana. School suffrage was granted to the women of Oregon, Washington and Idaho, almost without the asking, prior to 1883, when full suffrage was given to the women of Washington Territory by legislative enactment, amid almost universal rejoicing. It is a matter of history that for fifteen years prior to that enactment, your humble speaker had traveled, alone, over Oregon, Washington and Idaho, enduring toil, hardship, privation, ridicule, sneers and vituperation, and steadily overcoming all sorts of obstacles. It was through these experiences that I learned the necessity of using the same tact in dealing with men, in all our work for ballots, that nations had long before learned to exhaust, when dealing with each other, before resorting to force, or the argument of bullets. Every woman knows she cannot rule her own husband. The man who would consent to be ruled by his wife <(if against his will)>would be so poor an excuse for manhood that she wouldn’t consider him worth corralling in the chimney corner after somebody had driven him home. What is true of men in the abstract is equally true of men in the aggregate. Learning this fact, I proceeded, very early in my public career, to make the most of it; so I said everywhere, “Gentlemen, in our demand for the ballot we are not seeking to rule over you. We only ask for our enfranchisement because we desire freedom for ourselves. We recognize your right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with yourselves as the only proper judges of your own methods in that pursuit. And we most earnestly and respectfully demand a like recognition, on your part, of our right to the pursuit of liberty and happiness for ourselves, by methods of our own choosing, so long as they do not conflict with your prerogatives.” The Declaration of Independence and Preamble to the Constitution of the United States formed the basis of my many sermons through all those weary years. If any other line of argument had been pursued we could have made no headway with our voters; for you must yet learn to bear in mind, my sisters, one fact of which most of you12 seem strangely to have lost sight: we can only secure our right to vote by and through the consent of voters; and we have only gone ahead in the prosecution of our case when we have succeeded in gaining men’s consent. Whenever our demand for our right to vote is based upon an alleged purpose to take away from men any degree of what they deem their liberties, or own right of choice, we simply throw boomerangs that recoil upon our own heads. Every woman who stands behind the prison bars of her present political environment, reaching her manacled hands to men, who hold the key to the locked gates of constitutional law, through which she alone can gain her liberty, and says to them, “Give us the ballot, and we’ll put down your whiskey!” only arouses a thousand men to say by their votes, “Very well, we won’t give you the ballot and that will settle it. You sha’n’t have it at all if you are going to use it as a whip over us.” And right here, in the face and eyes of the temporarily fashionable fad of prohibition, I declare that as a temperance woman, I am opposed to prohibition on principle, [and always have been]. I have raised to manhood a large family of sober sons, who have wended their way to school and office, past the drug store and the groggery, all their lives. I never preached prohibition to them and never talked temperance in their hearing, except occasionally to say <(alluding to some drunken man)>, “Boys, you know that if you should go astray, the world would say it was your mother’s fault. She has dared to deviate from established custom by publicly advocating woman’s right to equality with man before the law. Men say boys are what their mothers make them and I accept the verdict. If you go wrong, your mother will bear the full blame for her <own> failure to make you what you ought to have been.” Madam President, that was always argument enough. My boys needed no prohibitory law to keep them sober, nor will the son of any woman whose guiding star is liberty and self-dependence. I have always left money, sweetmeats and other things that other people’s children might be tempted to steal, within my children’s reach. I would say by word and deed, “I trust you,” and they were proud to prove worthy of the trust. It is liberty that the mothers of children need; then responsibility and self-dependence naturally follow. But I recognize the right of others to hold different views, even if wrong; and their right to exercise their opinions is as sacred to me as my own, so long as they do not, by a mistaken policy, overthrow a greater work through their excess of zeal. At the time the women of Washington Territory received enfranchisement–on the 23d day of November, 1883, when Governor Newell<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_13_50" id="identifier_13_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).">13 signed the suffrage bill amid the mingled hallelujahs of Olympia’s guns and bells–the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was of recent origin on the Coast, and was looked upon by the mass of [our] voters in the Pacific Northwest as being quite as harmless in its way as the average woman’s prayer meeting. Its rank and file were not suffragists. They had never lifted voice or finger to secure their right to vote, but had often sat in the sanctuary singing, “Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight,”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_14_50" id="identifier_14_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Words and music by well-known Baptist minister and composer Robert Lowry (1826-1899), of Philadelphia and then Plainfield, New Jersey. Lowry wrote five hundred or so gospel tunes. “Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight,” one of his “most popular and sweetest” melodies, was published in The Fountain of Song in 1877 (“Where is My Boy Tonight?“; “Robert Lowry“; Jacob Henry Hall, “Robert Lowry: Baptist Preacher and Hymn Writer“).">14 when the little hoodlum was kicking up a rumpus at my suffrage meetings. A constitutional amendment for extending the right of suffrage to women was pending in Oregon at the time the women of Washington <Territory> were enfranchised, and great caution was needed, lest by excess of newly awakened prohibition zeal, we should scare the voters into ambush, where, behind the coverts of the law, they would be on the alert to strike us down. I had already scented the lurking danger that menaced us from the coverts of the liquor power–not liquor sellers <only>, for their numbers are limited, but liquor buyers and drinkers, who comprise everywhere the very large majority of the voters. So I came over here to our National Convention in 188415, and by the co-operation of our suffrage forces organized a “still hunt” campaign of our own, through which I verily believe we would have been successful at the June election of that year if it had not been for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which, though feeble in Oregon, was reinforced by <hired> lecturers from the East, who held suffrage meetings of their own in the interest of prohibition agitators, which nullified our “still hunt” method, and quite naturally aroused the ballot-handed liquor league, and its constituents, the voters, against us almost as a unit, everywhere.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_16_50" id="identifier_16_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="At the time, Scott Duniway blamed defeat–at least publicly–on a lack of financial support from Eastern suffragists (“U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage“). When and why she apparently came to a different view is uncertain. Perhaps at the time she found it was easier to blame outsiders than friends and acquaintances. But events of 1886 appear to have altered her thinking, or at least her candor. She first told the sad story of the brewer’s widow, repeated here, in the New Northwest (25 Mar. 1886); as she recounts here, prohibitionists immediately charged that she had been “bought by whiskey.” In addition to enduring “villainous slanders” regionally, the libel spread eastward, prompting, for example, the Massachusetts Woman’s Christian Prohibitory League to censure her (Moynihan, Rebel 186). Under intense personal attack, her attitude hardened. Perhaps she began to blame prohibitionists for defeats that a more generous spirit had attributed to other causes. At minimum, she seems to have resolved no longer to keep silent about their bungling: Her characterization of the Washington debacle here is frank to the point of pugnacity. Apparently she also had been reluctant to criticize a religiously-inspired movement until it became overtly political. A few months later, in an “open letter” to the Oregon W.C.T.U. and Prohibition Party, she wrote that she had “long postponed the telling of these disagreeable truths” while prohibitionists were fighting only “under the gospel banner,” but that, with the birth of the Prohibition Party in 1886, which “lowered the banner of the cross beneath the stars and stripes,” she “would be recreant to every principle of public duty” in failing to “protest against such suicidal proceedings” (New Northwest 17 June 1886). Finally, although an exceptionally tough-minded woman, it bears emphasizing that (as she intimates here), at the very time when political opposition had become most venomous, Scott Duniway was grieving for her only daughter, Clara, who had died that January (Moynihan, Rebel 137).">16 I had previously made arrangements with the Republican and Democratic central and county committees of Oregon by which, if the W.S.A. would furnish the ballots ready printed, they would handle “yes” tickets in such a way that fair play could be secured for us at the ballot boxes, and these committees, in turn, authorized the local committees of both parties to furnish bands and halls for the immense meetings of the campaign that awaited me at <the> county seats all over the state. I remember such a meeting at Pendleton, one of our principal eastern Oregon towns. A crowd had gathered at the opera house, the band was in attendance, vocal music by local talent was provided, and when the lecture hour came I made my way with great difficulty through the throng to the platform. There I was met by the excellent wife of the Congregational minister, president of the newly organized local W.C.T.U., who had never attempted to attend17 a suffrage meeting before in her life. This lady informed me that Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_18_50" id="identifier_18_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt (1830-1912): born Hopkinton, New Hampshire; valedictorian, State Normal School, West Newton, Massachusetts, 1851; began teaching in schools throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts at 16, including as head assistant at the Boylston Grammar School in Boston, 1854-57; married Thomas H. Leavitt, 1857; founded private school for young ladies and children, Boston, 1867-81; attracted by “Woman’s Crusade” of 1873-74, she helped organize Boston W.C.T.U.; beginning 1881, spoke throughout Massachusetts on behalf of New England Woman Suffrage Association and in favor of temperance education in schools; first superintendent of Franchise Department of national W.C.T.U., 1882; asked by Frances Willard to undertake work in California, Washington, and Oregon, July, 1883; began seven-year missionary journey to New Zealand, Australia, the Orient, India, Africa, and Europe, November, 1884; secretary, 1882-91, and honorary president, 1891, World’s W.C.T.U.; her ties to W.C.T.U. eroded during the 1890s and she mounted strident, even hysterical, attack on Willard (Giele; Who was Who 714).">18 was present; that she had been speaking for several evenings in the church to a small W.C.T.U. audience, and she wanted her to be heard, before leaving the town, by the general public. Though I knew that I would not at that time have been allowed to speak on the W.C.T.U. platform at all for fear I should say “ballot,” I could not afford to violate a principle of liberty by checking freedom of speech on a suffrage platform. So I asked Mrs. Leavitt to the seat beside me. Then, after an hour’s talk by myself on the fundamental principles of a republican form of government, during which men frequently tossed their hats to the ceiling in token of their appreciation of our cause, I introduced Mrs. Leavitt as “a distinguished ‘round-the-world ambassador of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who hailed from Boston.” The dear little one-idead woman came to the front and said: “The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which I have the honor to represent, is not a Woman Suffrage Association. The vast majority of our women are vehemently opposed to woman suffrage. They claim our work is devotional and religious, while the woman suffrage work is, as you know, political. But our leaders have learned, to our sorrow, that we can do very little toward securing prohibitory legislation, before Congress or legislatures, because women do not have votes. So we are gradually learning to accept woman suffrage as ‘a short-cut to prohibition.’”19 When the speaker took her seat the band began playing <to drown my effort to reply> and the crowd filed out, leaving that great audience of voters, two-thirds of whom were probably full of whiskey to their necks, to organize against us secretly, which they did to such purpose, all over the state, that when election day came, a few weeks later, every man who could be bought, cajoled or prejudiced against our amendment was voted, by their orders, against our unballotted hosts, while we sat with “our hands on our mouths and our mouths in the dust,” in powerless despair, our work of years overthrown in a day, while the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union remained as benignantly and self-righteously oblivious to the ruin it had aroused the enemy to bring down upon our devoted heads as Mrs. Leary’s cow.* <(*It was this cow that kicked over a lamp and created the great Chicago fire.)> But we still had hopes for Washington Territory, where the women had secured full suffrage before its W.C.T.U. was out of its swaddling clothes. Women were voters in that territory for three and a half years, notwithstanding the fact that repeated unsuccessful attempts to defeat them were made by men–attempts which nobody could parry but those who were acquainted with all the leading politicians, and knew every inch of the ground. It is needless to say to this convention that the attempts of leading men and women to secure a constitutional convention of woman suffragists was frustrated at this critical period by the untimely invasion of Mrs. Clara B. Colby<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_20_50" id="identifier_20_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”).">20 and other self-imported Eastern Suffragists, who created a “hurrah” campaign that completed the ruin the W.C.T.U. had begun. In January, 1886, when Washington was on the eve of Statehood, a Legislature met which had been chosen at the election of 1885, largely by women’s ballots. Both political parties had endorsed woman suffrage during the campaign, and the security of the measure seemed permanent. But in the meantime the prohibition wave that had arisen in the East, had swept over the women and preachers of the churches, and designing politicians, the kicked-outers of other political parties, massed themselves among them as its leaders. Clergymen who, by the very nature of their calling, are [generally] as full of impracticable business methods as inexperienced women, combined their forces all over the territory <as promoters of local option> and they said to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which they patted, petted, paid and praised, till it was no wonder it thought itself holier than the woman suffragists: “Women are Voters! Now is the time to show the world what you can do with the ballot”–forgetting that no ballot is in force in any State at this date of human development, unless there is a latent bullet behind it. The Legislature convened at Olympia in the very midst of this excitement, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, led by an enthusiastic little [old-maid] lecturer from <a little> Pennsylvania <village><a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_21_50" id="identifier_21_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Narcissa White Kinney (1854-1899?): born Grove City, Pennsylvania; sixth daughter of George W. White and Susanna Kerr Wallace; graduated Pennsylvania State Normal School with high honors; principal, Edinborough, Pennsylvania, training school; president, Grove City W.C.T.U., then county president; then state superintendent of scientific temperance instruction; became national lecturer and organizer, 1880; twice campaigned in Oregon and Washington; married Marshall J. Kinney, proprietor of fish canneries on Columbia River, 1888, moving to Astoria; W.C.T.U. state president, 1894-c. 1898; moved to Portland, 1899; died suddenly; “Her great heart was stirred to its very depths by the wrongs inflicted upon defenseless women and children by the liquor traffic and her deep sense of right and justice was outraged by the protection the traffic received from our national and civic government, so she threw her whole soul into the battle for prohibition and her strong personality and burning eloquence left their impress upon every community she visited in our great commonwealth” (Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 121-25). She is named in New Northwest accounts of these events (14 Jan. and 25 Mar. 1886).">21, [and] backed <secretly> by the National Liquor League, which worked hand and glove with it (though it did not know it), had no difficulty in securing just such prohibitory legislation as it asked for <under Territorial government>, while [the] men who <were secretly opposed to prohibition>22 chuckled over their success as strategists <, as they prepared to vote it down at the polls>. At that time my own home was over-shadowed23 by the trailing [shadow of the] wing of Azrael.24 My beloved only daughter<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_25_50" id="identifier_25_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara Belle Duniway Stearns (1854-1886): oldest child, and only daughter, of Ben and Abigail; in face of family disapproval, eloped with Don H. Stearns, publisher of short-lived, muckraking Portland Evening Bee and land speculator, December, 1876; “taken ill by something mysterious” in “swampy desolation” of Lake Camus on the Washougal during recession, 1884, which Stearns treated with hot lemonade for several months; returned to Duniway home in Portland, suffering from consumption, summer, 1885; died January, 1886; loss of “the precious earth-life that has throbbed in unison with ours since the days of our earliest womanhood” profoundly stirred Scott Duniway’s grief and sense of mission–at end, Abigail told Clara, “I wish I could go with you darling,” to which her daughter’s last words were, “You must finish your work, Ma!”; Scott Duniway, with long-standing spiritualist convictions, reported contact with Clara “through private psychic sources, within a month; and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (Moynihan, Rebel 124-26, 133; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 279).">25 was in the last stages of a fatal illness, and my duty kept me at my darling’s bedside. Women, wives of the members of the Legislature in some instances, wrote to me, saying: “The cause of woman suffrage is being drawn into a trap! Come over and help us to protest against this prohibition movement, which (under the guise of local option) will surely destroy our suffrages, if it is not checkmated.” I answered, “Now is your time to lead. Checkmate this movement while there is yet time! I cannot leave my post at home!” But the husbands of these women would not permit them to act, unless I would lead them, and receive in my own breast all the barbed arrows of the combined whiskey and prohibition elements. And, as [I could not leave my post at home, and] no other woman could be found who was willing to meet the crisis, women’s freedom went by default, and the frenzied friends of prohibition were made the cat’s-paw of the liquor league at its will.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_26_50" id="identifier_26_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Clara died of consumption on January 21, 1886, two weeks after the Washington Territorial Legislature passed the local option bill for which the W.C.T.U. had been agitating. Actually, the front page of the New Northwest (14 Jan. 1886) reported the territorial legislature’s action in blandly positive, certainly not denunciative, tones, and it printed a letter from an “old reader” that praised the law profusely. If Abigail felt this way about the bill at the time, she was pulling her punches, at least in print. The gloves soon would come off.">26 Need I tell <you> the result? In every precinct, no matter how the vote on local option went, the women got the blame. If a precinct went wet, prohibition shriekers cried: “There, don’t you see that women will not vote our way?” If a town went dry, the men who opposed prohibition would say: “There, we told you so! The women and the preachers are all fanatics together!”27 In the spring of 1886, seeing the danger that threatened women’s ballots at the next territorial election, I went to Walla Walla to sound the alarm. But I found a boycott against me in all the churches. So I was compelled to go to the residence of the widow of a brewer, from whose husband I had in former years often rented an opera house for suffrage meetings, before church pulpits had been opened to women at all.<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_28_50" id="identifier_28_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway departed for Walla Walla on March 18. Voicing greater doubt than she had when the local option bill first passed the legislature two months before, but still in a dispassionate, reasonable tone, she writes that the Walla Walla ordinance is “good–so far as it goes,” but is “lamentably deficient” by confiscating liquor dealers’ property without compensation. She claims that, because prohibitionists, like most women, “have comparatively little taxable property themselves, and therefore have nothing to lose,” they do not appreciate sufficiently “the demands of business, or the property rights of men and women whose daily bread depends” on the liquor industry, “however much we must despise it”; yet, with a “carefully prepared ‘compensation clause’” the bill could be “a most effective means of dealing with this vexed and vexing question.” The brewer’s widow is her object lesson (New Northwest 25 Mar. 1886).">28 The brewer’s widow, at first indignantly denied my request. She said, and mark you, Madam President, there is a lesson here: “When we came to Walla Walla, the town was little, and it was dead already, but my husband brought with him ten thousand dollars. I earned more than half of that29 money myself, a-washin’ for miners at Canyon City. But the30 money was not mine! [De] women had no rights! So my husband, he start a brewery. He buy the people’s barley; he subscribe to churches and bridges and schoolhouses; and by and by he build this brewery. I scolded, for I don’t like the business! [It is a nasty business!] But what could I do? Women had no rights. By and by he die, and leave31 me a mortgage of forty thousand dollars. You know he helped you for [de] woman’s rights when the churches wouldn’t! When the <suffrage> law was made, I, too, was glad; but now comes prohibition! Women’s votes will shut up my business. Interest will come due, I cannot pay. By and by comes a32 sheriff and turns me and my children in the street. You call it33 Christianity! I call it robbery! No; you can’t have34 my hall.” I assured her that she greatly misunderstood35 the spirit of Christian women (as I then <thought I> understood it), if she believed that they intended to raid or loot her means of livelihood <, and provide her nothing in return>! I told her we would gladly help her to pursue a different business, if she would let us; and I added: “Come out tomorrow night and hear me speak in your hall, and I will present your side of the question to the women.” She answered like a flash: “You would not dare! Women would ostracize you! You don’t know the36 spirit!” I assured her that I had dared greater things, and after a little parley I hired her hall for two nights. On the first evening the hall was packed, in spite of opposition meetings held by prohibitionists in all the churches. My theme was “Woman’s Opportunity.” I told the new voters that the present conflict was forced upon them by the combined efforts of their friends, who were blinded by zeal, and their enemies, who, alert from self-interest, were determined to lead their ballots into a trap. In telling the story of the brewer’s widow, I added: “Last night, after I had left her house, I paused on the sidewalk, under the blooming locust trees, and looked up at the moonlight, shimmering through the leaves, and lying in lambent sheen on that brewery, a great pile of mortar and masonry, held down by that widow’s mortgage; and I thought ‘here is woman’s opportunity.’ If, instead of joining men in this conflict for prohibition, which, even if successful at the ballot-box, cannot be enforced, except by bullets, you will utilize your newly acquired power by forming a corporation to buy or lease that great building–if you will convert it into a cannery, or creamery, or both, and [will] give employment to that woman and her children, and to the wives and children of all the men in your midst, whose means of livelihood are now in jeopardy, the fame of your philanthropy and common sense will go out to other portions of our goodly country and the success of your business methods will inspire the voters of all other states and territories to emulate the example of the men who gave you the ballot. Then, in due time, under the happy environment of a free motherhood, a race of men will spring up who will not be slaves to appetite, and prohibition <and drunkenness> will die a natural death.” This proposition took immensely with the women that night, but the next morning’s papers, after being interviewed by prohibition agitators, contained awful criticisms, under flaring scareheads, accusing me of pandering to the liquor interests; and all the women of the churches, except the leading suffragists, whose protests were lost in the clamor, accepted the story of a whiskey-soaked, loud-mouth37 prohibition agitator from <the brothels and saloons of> Portland, who said, “Mrs. Duniway has sold out to whiskey!” and the prohibitionists <, repeating the slander,> cried, almost with one accord, “Away with such a woman from the earth!<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_38_50" id="identifier_38_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail’s own experiences as a businesswoman are powerful evidence that her defense of property rights was genuinely principled. Nonetheless, it was seen readily by true-believing prohibitionists–who already were distrustful of Abigail’s consorting with a brewer’s widow–as consorting with the devil himself. And it could be twisted by forces bent on discrediting her and her cause into the charge that she had been bought. Three months later, in a rage, she would recount recent events in Yakima: Agitators from the national W.C.T.U., “frenzied” advocates of a local option bill, “had accepted as a welcome ally in an insane and ineffective crusade” one “Col.” Hawkins, “an irresponsible vagabond, a dead-beat, a drunkard, and a habitue of bruisers’ resorts and vile dens,” who spread the “vile and characteristic falsehood” that she had received $1,000 from the liquor interests of Walla Walla and $10,000 from those of Portland. The “dodgers” announcing her speech in Yakima were mutilated: Words were pasted over so that the invitation to speak, which had been extended by the “many friends of Woman Suffrage,” was made to read “many friends of the wholesale liquor dealers.” This “villainy” was perpetrated by one Charles Lillie, “a gambler, an ex-gin-slinger, an opponent of Woman Suffrage, of course, and a notorious ward striker, who makes it his business at elections to act the bully in challenging the votes of women” (New Northwest 17 June 1886). Under such intense personal attack, it is not surprising that Scott Duniway’s attitude hardened. While she had voiced reasonable reservations about the Walla Walla measure, she flatly would denounce the Yakima bill as a fraud: The “wily advocates of rum” have prepared a “trap” for woman suffrage by enabling “any man, woman, or child” to obtain “any quantity” of liquor from “any druggist or apothecary, without a written permit from any clergyman or church officer, or any physician, scientist, or mechanic,” simply by alleging that the liquor is for “sacramental purposes,” and “the result will be that you will have all the horrors of the whisky traffic, with no power whatever to control or regulate it.” Over the next several weeks, she would author a seven-part series, entitled “The Temperance Problem,” that reinterprets history through this firmly anti-prohibition lens (New Northwest 8 July-19 Aug. 1886). The third installment contends that her “line of argument and action in the temperance work is precisely the same to-day that it has always been,” but confesses: “The storm that has lately beaten about our own ears shows plainly that we did not underrate the fury we should have to encounter if we dared bid [prohibitionists] open their eyes and see that they were going wrong. But the knowledge of the storm that we would evoke did not justify our procrastination or cowardice during by-gone years, and for this alone we ask the public’s pardon. We are devoutly repentant for having been lashed under compulsion into the tardy performance of our duty; but we are devoutly thankful also that the lashing no longer annoys us” (New Northwest 22 July 1886). Nor would she let the Charlie Lillie episode rest. When the Washington Farmer subsequently printed a different version of events, she called it a “tissue of falsehoods” and railed: “It is just such infamous scoundrelism as this in behalf of ‘temperance reform’ that is fast making its very name a hissing and a by-word among honest, fair-minded people” (New Northwest 8 July 8 1886). This seven-part series became the foundation for “Ballots and Bullets” (and other talks on prohibition): The articles tell many of the same stories related here, only in greater detail and frequently in the same idiom.">38 Dear friends, why prolong the story? That ex-brewer’s widow still runs her dead husband’s business39. The men voters of Oregon and Washington still drink intoxicating liquors whenever so inclined, as they always will, whether women vote or not; and the women ex-voters of <the State of> Washington find themselves with the iron gates of a state constitution shutting them out from the exercise of their liberties, while they are left to chant mournfully: “Whisky recovered from the fight; ‘twas woman’s vote that died!”<a href="https://asduniway.org/%e2%80%9cballots-and-bullets%e2%80%9d-circa-january-21-23-1889/#footnote_40_50" id="identifier_40_50" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In February, 1887, about eight months after the local option elections, ruling on a case brought by a gambler who had been indicted by a grand jury that included some women, the territorial supreme court voided the 1883 suffrage statute on a technicality. Scott Duniway pointedly criticized this reversal (New Northwest 10 Feb. 1887.) When the next legislature, in January, 1888, rectified the defect and reenacted the law, a test case was contrived in which Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, an opponent of suffrage and wife of a saloonkeeper, arranged to have her ballot rejected in a Spokane municipal election and then sued the precinct judges, with the result that the territorial supreme court voided the new act on the grounds that Congress had not intended to empower the territories to enfranchise women (Larson, “Washington” 54-55; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 1096-98).">40 As I conclude, I must crave your indulgence while I repeat an illustration often used by myself in that memorable struggle, because I feel that its potency is yet to be required in other places, perhaps for years to come, ere women learn the ins and outs of one-sex politics, against which they seek blindly to do battle, with their own hands in manacles. The story goes that a man was walking on the beach and came to a little bayou, leading from the ocean, up which a salmon was struggling, favored by the tide. The man had a scythe on his shoulder. The bayou was so narrow that he could step across it; and with all his mind on the alert, possessed by the one idea that he must have that salmon then and there, he brought down the handle of his scythe to knock the fish upon the head, but it eluded his blow, and the blade of the scythe came down upon his own neck with such force that it severed his head from his shoulders. Dear friends, let us seek first the kingdom of liberty and its power; then all other blessings can41 be gradually attained42 as fast as they can be understood and assimilated by a free people, led by men and women who respect everybody’s rights. If in anything I have said tonight I have given any one of my sincere co-workers a moment’s pain, I can only say I am sorry, but I must not withhold the facts. In spite of our blunders we are marching on! The fiat has gone forth and men and women together will alike be free! NOTES Moynihan sheds some light on the family background that may have contributed to Scott Duniway’s opinions. Although Grandfather Roelofson had been a teetotaler since his religious conversion in 1795, the Scotts were “moral suasionists rather than prohibitionists,” and the Sons of Temperance, to which Tucker Scott belonged, was “frequently denounced by cold-water Yankees” (ardent New England temperance advocates who settled the nearby town of Tremont, Illinois) as a “secret order” opposed to legal prohibition and even to “true religion” (Rebel 23). The General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church endorsed prohibition in 1883 and national prohibition in 1885, while in 1884 the National Conference of the Unitarian Church merely called “affectionately” on moderate drinkers “to give up such use out of compassion for their weaker brethren” (Cherrington 217, 221-22, 225). This difference likely contributed to Abigail’s drift from the denomination of her childhood to the more moderate Unitarians. History of Woman Suffrage 3: 772. The 1880s witnessed greater state-level agitation for prohibition than had been seen in thirty years, although the measure ultimately failed in three-fourths of cases. The Oregon legislature twice (in 1883 and 1885) approved an amendment, endorsed by the Republican state convention in 1886, which was rejected by voters in the fall of 1887 (Cherrington 216-17, 225-26, 231). Washington Territory adopted local option in 1885 and voted down prohibition four years later (Cherrington 223, 236). Thus, it is not surprising that, as she does here, Abigail attributed the 1884 defeat in Oregon and the 1887-88 reversal of fortune in Washington to those who campaigned loudly for suffrage as a “shortcut to prohibition.” Suffragists and prohibitionists were warming to each other nationally as well. The W.C.T.U., which Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard founded in 1874 and of which she became President in 1879, endorsed “the ballot for woman as a weapon for the protection of her home” in 1880 (Campbell, Man 2: 317). Willard’s Home Protection Party merged with the Prohibition Party in 1882, and Willard persuaded it to endorse woman suffrage in 1882, although this endorsement was withdrawn two years later (Cherrington 167; Campbell, Man 2: 317). N.W.S.A.’s 1887 convention passed a resolution praising the W.C.T.U.’s endorsement of woman suffrage (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 122-23). In April, 1888, Willard joined Anthony, Cady Stanton, and others in testifying before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 137-42). Meanwhile, committed prohibitionists such as Anna Howard Shaw, Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby, and Mary Ashton Rice Livermore played increasingly prominent roles in N.W.S.A. Such developments made Scott Duniway fear for the association’s direction. Some measure of jealousy probably also was involved: Prohibitionists–no matter how famous–were jenny-come-lately’s to the suffrage cause. No doubt Abigail would have choked on a subsequent assertion, by the General Secretary of the World League Against Alcoholism, that the W.C.T.U. “pioneered the movement for equal suffrage” (Cherrington 174-75). Scott Duniway’s autobiography, Path Breaking, and the Sunday Oregonian, September 9, 1906, both date the speech in February. However, History of Woman Suffrage reports that the convention was held on January 21-23 (4: 143). 4: 151. Chittenden, American West 27. A. Duniway, Path Breaking 201-03. 188-200. Susan B. Anthony, who was presiding in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s absence (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 144). An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). Oregonian: “women” for “of you” William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282). Words and music by well-known Baptist minister and composer Robert Lowry (1826-1899), of Philadelphia and then Plainfield, New Jersey. Lowry wrote five hundred or so gospel tunes. “Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight,” one of his “most popular and sweetest” melodies, was published in The Fountain of Song in 1877 (“Where is My Boy Tonight?“; “Robert Lowry“; Jacob Henry Hall, “Robert Lowry: Baptist Preacher and Hymn Writer“). See “National Woman Suffrage Association Convention.” At the time, Scott Duniway blamed defeat–at least publicly–on a lack of financial support from Eastern suffragists (“U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage“). When and why she apparently came to a different view is uncertain. Perhaps at the time she found it was easier to blame outsiders than friends and acquaintances. But events of 1886 appear to have altered her thinking, or at least her candor. She first told the sad story of the brewer’s widow, repeated here, in the New Northwest (25 Mar. 1886); as she recounts here, prohibitionists immediately charged that she had been “bought by whiskey.” In addition to enduring “villainous slanders” regionally, the libel spread eastward, prompting, for example, the Massachusetts Woman’s Christian Prohibitory League to censure her (Moynihan, Rebel 186). Under intense personal attack, her attitude hardened. Perhaps she began to blame prohibitionists for defeats that a more generous spirit had attributed to other causes. At minimum, she seems to have resolved no longer to keep silent about their bungling: Her characterization of the Washington debacle here is frank to the point of pugnacity. Apparently she also had been reluctant to criticize a religiously-inspired movement until it became overtly political. A few months later, in an “open letter” to the Oregon W.C.T.U. and Prohibition Party, she wrote that she had “long postponed the telling of these disagreeable truths” while prohibitionists were fighting only “under the gospel banner,” but that, with the birth of the Prohibition Party in 1886, which “lowered the banner of the cross beneath the stars and stripes,” she “would be recreant to every principle of public duty” in failing to “protest against such suicidal proceedings” (New Northwest 17 June 1886). Finally, although an exceptionally tough-minded woman, it bears emphasizing that (as she intimates here), at the very time when political opposition had become most venomous, Scott Duniway was grieving for her only daughter, Clara, who had died that January (Moynihan, Rebel 137). Oregonian: “attended” Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt (1830-1912): born Hopkinton, New Hampshire; valedictorian, State Normal School, West Newton, Massachusetts, 1851; began teaching in schools throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts at 16, including as head assistant at the Boylston Grammar School in Boston, 1854-57; married Thomas H. Leavitt, 1857; founded private school for young ladies and children, Boston, 1867-81; attracted by “Woman’s Crusade” of 1873-74, she helped organize Boston W.C.T.U.; beginning 1881, spoke throughout Massachusetts on behalf of New England Woman Suffrage Association and in favor of temperance education in schools; first superintendent of Franchise Department of national W.C.T.U., 1882; asked by Frances Willard to undertake work in California, Washington, and Oregon, July, 1883; began seven-year missionary journey to New Zealand, Australia, the Orient, India, Africa, and Europe, November, 1884; secretary, 1882-91, and honorary president, 1891, World’s W.C.T.U.; her ties to W.C.T.U. eroded during the 1890s and she mounted strident, even hysterical, attack on Willard (Giele; Who was Who 714). Scott Duniway’s “open letter” also singles out Clement Leavitt for rebuke, calling her “good but impractical” (New Northwest 17 June 1886). Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1846-1916): born Gloucester, England; raised in Wisconsin; graduated valedictorian, University of Wisconsin, Madison, having followed regular men’s curriculum in philosophy and Latin; moved to Beatrice, Nebraska, 1872; helped organize Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, 1881; president, 1885-98; editor, Woman’s Tribune, 1883-1909, which came to be regarded as official organ of National Woman Suffrage Association; moved to Washington, D.C., after 1888; worked to achieve “Minor plan” for suffrage, devised by husband of Virginia Louisa Minor (losing plaintiff of Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 1875; Pinkney), who argued that women, as “people,” possessed Constitutional right to vote for members of House of Representatives, which Congress could effectuate by simple majority vote; declining subscriptions to Woman’s Tribune and divorce encouraged her to make fresh start in Portland, 1904, eventuating in power struggle for O.S.W.S.A. leadership; entry in Notable American Women ignores this conflict, saying only that Bewick Colby “participated in several state suffrage campaigns led by” Scott Duniway (Green; Jerry, “Clara Bewick Colby”). Narcissa White Kinney (1854-1899?): born Grove City, Pennsylvania; sixth daughter of George W. White and Susanna Kerr Wallace; graduated Pennsylvania State Normal School with high honors; principal, Edinborough, Pennsylvania, training school; president, Grove City W.C.T.U., then county president; then state superintendent of scientific temperance instruction; became national lecturer and organizer, 1880; twice campaigned in Oregon and Washington; married Marshall J. Kinney, proprietor of fish canneries on Columbia River, 1888, moving to Astoria; W.C.T.U. state president, 1894-c. 1898; moved to Portland, 1899; died suddenly; “Her great heart was stirred to its very depths by the wrongs inflicted upon defenseless women and children by the liquor traffic and her deep sense of right and justice was outraged by the protection the traffic received from our national and civic government, so she threw her whole soul into the battle for prohibition and her strong personality and burning eloquence left their impress upon every community she visited in our great commonwealth” (Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 121-25). She is named in New Northwest accounts of these events (14 Jan. and 25 Mar. 1886). Oregonian: “men who wanted it.” Oregonian: “over-clouded.” The angel who, in ancient Hebrew and Muslim traditions, parts the soul from the body in death. Clara Belle Duniway Stearns (1854-1886): oldest child, and only daughter, of Ben and Abigail; in face of family disapproval, eloped with Don H. Stearns, publisher of short-lived, muckraking Portland Evening Bee and land speculator, December, 1876; “taken ill by something mysterious” in “swampy desolation” of Lake Camus on the Washougal during recession, 1884, which Stearns treated with hot lemonade for several months; returned to Duniway home in Portland, suffering from consumption, summer, 1885; died January, 1886; loss of “the precious earth-life that has throbbed in unison with ours since the days of our earliest womanhood” profoundly stirred Scott Duniway’s grief and sense of mission–at end, Abigail told Clara, “I wish I could go with you darling,” to which her daughter’s last words were, “You must finish your work, Ma!”; Scott Duniway, with long-standing spiritualist convictions, reported contact with Clara “through private psychic sources, within a month; and I have never since been able to think of her as dead” (Moynihan, Rebel 124-26, 133; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 279). Clara died of consumption on January 21, 1886, two weeks after the Washington Territorial Legislature passed the local option bill for which the W.C.T.U. had been agitating. Actually, the front page of the New Northwest (14 Jan. 1886) reported the territorial legislature’s action in blandly positive, certainly not denunciative, tones, and it printed a letter from an “old reader” that praised the law profusely. If Abigail felt this way about the bill at the time, she was pulling her punches, at least in print. The gloves soon would come off. Scott Duniway’s chronology here is confusing. She is speaking in this paragraph of local elections on the question, which would have occurred in June, after her trip to Walla Walla, described below. Scott Duniway departed for Walla Walla on March 18. Voicing greater doubt than she had when the local option bill first passed the legislature two months before, but still in a dispassionate, reasonable tone, she writes that the Walla Walla ordinance is “good–so far as it goes,” but is “lamentably deficient” by confiscating liquor dealers’ property without compensation. She claims that, because prohibitionists, like most women, “have comparatively little taxable property themselves, and therefore have nothing to lose,” they do not appreciate sufficiently “the demands of business, or the property rights of men and women whose daily bread depends” on the liquor industry, “however much we must despise it”; yet, with a “carefully prepared ‘compensation clause’” the bill could be “a most effective means of dealing with this vexed and vexing question.” The brewer’s widow is her object lesson (New Northwest 25 Mar. 1886). The Oregonian version records a Germanic accent, “o’ dot.” Oregonian: “dot” Oregonian: “leaf” Oregonian: “dot” Oregonian: “calls dot” Oregonian: “haf” Oregonian: “mistook” Oregonian: “dot” Oregonian: “red-mouthed.” The reference is to “Col.” Hawkins; infra, n. 38. Abigail’s own experiences as a businesswoman are powerful evidence that her defense of property rights was genuinely principled. Nonetheless, it was seen readily by true-believing prohibitionists–who already were distrustful of Abigail’s consorting with a brewer’s widow–as consorting with the devil himself. And it could be twisted by forces bent on discrediting her and her cause into the charge that she had been bought. Three months later, in a rage, she would recount recent events in Yakima: Agitators from the national W.C.T.U., “frenzied” advocates of a local option bill, “had accepted as a welcome ally in an insane and ineffective crusade” one “Col.” Hawkins, “an irresponsible vagabond, a dead-beat, a drunkard, and a habitue of bruisers’ resorts and vile dens,” who spread the “vile and characteristic falsehood” that she had received $1,000 from the liquor interests of Walla Walla and $10,000 from those of Portland. The “dodgers” announcing her speech in Yakima were mutilated: Words were pasted over so that the invitation to speak, which had been extended by the “many friends of Woman Suffrage,” was made to read “many friends of the wholesale liquor dealers.” This “villainy” was perpetrated by one Charles Lillie, “a gambler, an ex-gin-slinger, an opponent of Woman Suffrage, of course, and a notorious ward striker, who makes it his business at elections to act the bully in challenging the votes of women” (New Northwest 17 June 1886). Under such intense personal attack, it is not surprising that Scott Duniway’s attitude hardened. While she had voiced reasonable reservations about the Walla Walla measure, she flatly would denounce the Yakima bill as a fraud: The “wily advocates of rum” have prepared a “trap” for woman suffrage by enabling “any man, woman, or child” to obtain “any quantity” of liquor from “any druggist or apothecary, without a written permit from any clergyman or church officer, or any physician, scientist, or mechanic,” simply by alleging that the liquor is for “sacramental purposes,” and “the result will be that you will have all the horrors of the whisky traffic, with no power whatever to control or regulate it.” Over the next several weeks, she would author a seven-part series, entitled “The Temperance Problem,” that reinterprets history through this firmly anti-prohibition lens (New Northwest 8 July-19 Aug. 1886). The third installment contends that her “line of argument and action in the temperance work is precisely the same to-day that it has always been,” but confesses: “The storm that has lately beaten about our own ears shows plainly that we did not underrate the fury we should have to encounter if we dared bid [prohibitionists] open their eyes and see that they were going wrong. But the knowledge of the storm that we would evoke did not justify our procrastination or cowardice during by-gone years, and for this alone we ask the public’s pardon. We are devoutly repentant for having been lashed under compulsion into the tardy performance of our duty; but we are devoutly thankful also that the lashing no longer annoys us” (New Northwest 22 July 1886). Nor would she let the Charlie Lillie episode rest. When the Washington Farmer subsequently printed a different version of events, she called it a “tissue of falsehoods” and railed: “It is just such infamous scoundrelism as this in behalf of ‘temperance reform’ that is fast making its very name a hissing and a by-word among honest, fair-minded people” (New Northwest 8 July 8 1886). This seven-part series became the foundation for “Ballots and Bullets” (and other talks on prohibition): The articles tell many of the same stories related here, only in greater detail and frequently in the same idiom. Oregonian: “‘nasty business’” In February, 1887, about eight months after the local option elections, ruling on a case brought by a gambler who had been indicted by a grand jury that included some women, the territorial supreme court voided the 1883 suffrage statute on a technicality. Scott Duniway pointedly criticized this reversal (New Northwest 10 Feb. 1887.) When the next legislature, in January, 1888, rectified the defect and reenacted the law, a test case was contrived in which Mrs. Nevada Bloomer, an opponent of suffrage and wife of a saloonkeeper, arranged to have her ballot rejected in a Spokane municipal election and then sued the precinct judges, with the result that the territorial supreme court voided the new act on the grounds that Congress had not intended to empower the territories to enfranchise women (Larson, “Washington” 54-55; History of Woman Suffrage 4: 1096-98). Oregonian: “shall” Oregonian: “added thereunto”
VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON TERRITORY – July 4, 1885
The year following their 1884 defeat at the polls1, Oregon suffragists were invited by their sisters to the north, who had won their own right to vote scarcely twenty months before, to an unusual Independence Day celebration, described as “the first equal rights celebration since the nation’s birth.” The “good citizens of Vancouver . . […]
The year following their 1884 defeat at the polls<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_1_48" id="identifier_1_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway was not chastened or discouraged into idleness in this year. In the three months following the June defeat, she traveled 1,500 miles, gave forty-three public lectures, complained about inadequate financial support, and implored others to enter the field: “Where are the philanthropists who will shoulder this load and help the women on to victory by putting workers in the field at living wages? . . . There is work, and plenty of it, awaiting every woman who can make a speech. . . . Some of you are not slow to criticize your humble servant for not having done more effective duty. What are you doing yourselves?” (New Northwest 18 Sept. 1884)">1, Oregon suffragists were invited by their sisters to the north, who had won their own right to vote scarcely twenty months before, to an unusual Independence Day celebration, described as “the first equal rights celebration since the nation’s birth.” The “good citizens of Vancouver . . . magnanimously tendered the free use of their city park” for the occasion. Apparently, some were more magnanimous than others because, “when it was known among certain elements that the celebration was to be one of absolute equality between men and the newly enfranchised people of the commonwealth, certain local societies refused to parade or otherwise participate in the festivities.” These elements, however, “were neither missed nor needed.” Traveling by steamer from Portland, the celebrants were greeted in Vancouver by the U.S. Fourteenth Infantry Band and paraded to the park in a procession led by “a magnificent ship of state on wheels,” decorated with banners and evergreens, “sails furled and flag floating at the masthead,” carrying ninety-four “beautifully attired boys and girls,” and drawn by six “splendidly matched horses” furnished by renowned Indian-fighter Nelson Appleton Miles.<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_2_48" id="identifier_2_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1839-1925): born Westminster, Massachusetts; entered army at outbreak of Civil War, 1861, organized company of volunteers, distinguished himself at several major battles, including Antietam and Fredericksburg, becoming brigadier general, 1864, and major general, 1865, of volunteers; married Mary Hoyt Sherman, 1868; remaining in army as colonel after war, led numerous campaigns against Native tribes in the west; destroyed Crazy Horse’s village, 1877; captured Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, 1877; accepted surrender of Apache under Geronimo, 1886; suppressed Sioux outbreak in Dakota, 1890-91; also led troops called out during Pullman strike, Chicago, 1894, and troops occupying Puerto Rico during Spanish-American War, 1898 (“Miles, Nelson Appleton”; Who was Who 838).">2 At the end of the parade, amidst “soul-stirring harmonies” from the band, a group of twenty-two took the platform, including General Miles, Judge B. F. Dennison<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_3_48" id="identifier_3_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Benjamin F. Dennison: appointed by legislature to board of regents, University of Washington, 1866-67, and elected president; appointed by governor to three-person commission charged with revising and codifying territorial law, c. 1868; appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant chief justice of territorial supreme court, 1869-71; delegate, territorial constitutional convention, 1878 (which Scott Duniway also attended and addressed), which guaranteed right of women to pursue “any lawful business, avocation, or profession” but failed to remove gender as qualification for voting (Bancroft, History of Washington 216, 273, 279, 290-91).">3, Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_4_48" id="identifier_4_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair (1840-1926): first female physician with medical degree on the Pacific coast; Abigail’s good friend and subscription agent, New Northwest, 1871-87; born Missouri; family came overland in the Applegate wagon train of 1843, settling on Clatsop Plains; moved to Umpqua Valley c. 1852; no formal schooling until age 12; married father’s former farmhand on her 14th birthday; son George born 1856; divorced 1859; opened school in Astoria, then millinery shop in Roseburg, 1867; leaving George with Scott Duniway, entered Eclectic School of Medicine of Pennsylvania, 1873, earning certificate as “bath doctor,” 1874; opened practice in Roseburg, then Portland; earned M.D., University of Michigan, 1880; married Col. John Adair, 1884; following death of newborn daughter, left Portland for rural Astoria; adopted two children, 1891; moved to North Yakima, Washington, c. 1893; divorced 1907; advocate of temperance and “crusader” for eugenic sterilization of unfit (Bingham; Corning 187-88; “Bethenia Owens-Adair“; Jean M. Ward, “Bethenia Owens-Adair“; “Bethenia Owens-Adair“).">4, Josephine DeVore Johnson<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_5_48" id="identifier_5_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1845-?): born in Illinois; daughter of Rev. John F. DeVore, prominent Methodist minister in Oregon and Puget Sound conferences, member, publishing committee, Pacific Christian Advocate (newspaper with which the New Northwest repeatedly clashed editorially), and trustee of Willamette University; emigrated to Oregon, 1853; graduate of Willamette University; “one of the most intelligent women in the State”; on Christmas Day, 1868, married William Carey Johnson, a printer (with Oregon Spectator and Argus), attorney (Oregon City district attorney, 1858; city recorder, 1859; prosecutor for 4th Judicial District, 1862), and Republican politician (ran for legislature, 1857; state senator, 1866); mother of five; like Scott Duniway, active in Woman’s Auxiliary of Oregon Pioneer Association (Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.; Hines 550-51; Hodgkin and Galvin 75; Lang 638-39; Transactions of the Thirty-Fifth 11 [see also the Transactions for 1885, 1889, and 1908]; Republican League 229; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 301-03).">5, Scott Duniway, her son, Hubert Ray Duniway, and his second wife, Cora Parsons Duniway. Close at hand was “a superb local choir.” Illness prevented Hattie Loughary<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_6_48" id="identifier_6_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175).">6 from attending, so Abigail ran the show. She was, of course, a celebrity; in fact, she had been nominated for the governorship of the territory the preceding year.7 Following prayer and the singing of the national anthem, DeVore Johnson–in the tradition of the now-famous 1848 Declaration of Sentiments–delivered a revised Declaration of Independence, more amenable to the principle of equality between the sexes; the band furnished “an extended and excellent interlude of music”; and then Scott Duniway delivered the opening address. Following more music, oratory, and dinner, the celebrants reassembled for several short speeches. Abigail “begged leave to defend the men of Oregon–just a little” by noting that twelve thousand had voted in favor of the suffrage amendment the year before, and read a poem entitled “A Rallying Song,” written by a young man from southern Oregon. Next she read a set of resolutions, the last of which warned that, should the Oregon legislature at its next session fail to “bestow upon us the same electoral privileges which the women of Washington already enjoy, we will prepare to cross the Columbia River and take up our permanent abode in this ‘land of the free and home of the brave.’” Then the program was declared finished and the evening opened for socializing and dancing. “And when, as the sun slowly descended the fiery West, the good boats stopped at the docks and took aboard the visitors from Oregon, all were emphatic in their praises of the citizens of Vancouver, under whose auspices they had enjoyed one day of perfect equality before the law.” The text of Abigail’s address, and this account of the occasion, are taken from the New Northwest, July 9, 1885. Fellow-Citizens–for thus I am proud this day to style you: We are assembled at this hour, in the cool shadows of this beautiful grove, on the sacred soil of freedom, where for the first time in the history of this nation men and women have met together to celebrate the spirit and letter of the original Declaration of Independence, which is omitted today, not because of any lack of reverence for that immortal instrument, but to give place to a new version of its eternal principles, so long understood by us, and so graciously accepted now by the chivalry and manhood of the mighty State of the future, to which, bearing the name of Washington, the Father of our Country, shall indeed belong the proud and happy title of the Mother of our Country. Somehow, as I stand here, in presence of this vast multitude, the scroll of the century rolls away, and I see the great occasion, so familiar to you all in history, when men who intended to use the old Liberty Bell at Independence Hall to proclaim the glad tidings of freedom to all the people in a land where not one woman was free, had stationed a small boy at the base of the belfry to give the proper signal to the man in the steeple. And when the boy cried out: “Ring, father! ring, RING, RING! The country’s free!” the old man mustered all his strength, and, giving forth the force that was intended to compel the sensate metal to answer back in sonorous sounds of acclaim, the old Bell quivered in every nerve, and shrank beneath the blow, and broke its heart rather than tell a lie! The panorama changes, and I behold another scene, a full-rounded century later, when this mighty nation, having spread its empire to the very verge of the continent, experiences a new birth of the Goddess of Liberty; and I behold Governor Newell<a href="https://asduniway.org/vancouver-washington-territory-july-4-1885/#footnote_8_48" id="identifier_8_48" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).">8, of Washington Territory, with a golden pen in his hand, presented him for the purpose by women newly enfranchised, and lo! he is engaged in signing a Woman Suffrage bill, amid the mingling hallelujahs of booming guns and ringing bells. Ah, there is no cracked bell to enter its eternal protest against the paeans of rejoicing that roll in billows of harmony over thy free soil today, O Washington! The star of empire, that for centuries had been steadily making its way west and yet west, until it seemed that its journey could never end, reached its point of culmination on the 22nd day of November, 1883, and, retrograding, has ever since been rolling onward in its eastward way, shedding abroad the glorious light of a liberty that shall yet be universal! NOTES Scott Duniway was not chastened or discouraged into idleness in this year. In the three months following the June defeat, she traveled 1,500 miles, gave forty-three public lectures, complained about inadequate financial support, and implored others to enter the field: “Where are the philanthropists who will shoulder this load and help the women on to victory by putting workers in the field at living wages? . . . There is work, and plenty of it, awaiting every woman who can make a speech. . . . Some of you are not slow to criticize your humble servant for not having done more effective duty. What are you doing yourselves?” (New Northwest 18 Sept. 1884) (1839-1925): born Westminster, Massachusetts; entered army at outbreak of Civil War, 1861, organized company of volunteers, distinguished himself at several major battles, including Antietam and Fredericksburg, becoming brigadier general, 1864, and major general, 1865, of volunteers; married Mary Hoyt Sherman, 1868; remaining in army as colonel after war, led numerous campaigns against Native tribes in the west; destroyed Crazy Horse’s village, 1877; captured Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, 1877; accepted surrender of Apache under Geronimo, 1886; suppressed Sioux outbreak in Dakota, 1890-91; also led troops called out during Pullman strike, Chicago, 1894, and troops occupying Puerto Rico during Spanish-American War, 1898 (“Miles, Nelson Appleton”; Who was Who 838). Benjamin F. Dennison: appointed by legislature to board of regents, University of Washington, 1866-67, and elected president; appointed by governor to three-person commission charged with revising and codifying territorial law, c. 1868; appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant chief justice of territorial supreme court, 1869-71; delegate, territorial constitutional convention, 1878 (which Scott Duniway also attended and addressed), which guaranteed right of women to pursue “any lawful business, avocation, or profession” but failed to remove gender as qualification for voting (Bancroft, History of Washington 216, 273, 279, 290-91). Bethenia Angelina Owens-Adair (1840-1926): first female physician with medical degree on the Pacific coast; Abigail’s good friend and subscription agent, New Northwest, 1871-87; born Missouri; family came overland in the Applegate wagon train of 1843, settling on Clatsop Plains; moved to Umpqua Valley c. 1852; no formal schooling until age 12; married father’s former farmhand on her 14th birthday; son George born 1856; divorced 1859; opened school in Astoria, then millinery shop in Roseburg, 1867; leaving George with Scott Duniway, entered Eclectic School of Medicine of Pennsylvania, 1873, earning certificate as “bath doctor,” 1874; opened practice in Roseburg, then Portland; earned M.D., University of Michigan, 1880; married Col. John Adair, 1884; following death of newborn daughter, left Portland for rural Astoria; adopted two children, 1891; moved to North Yakima, Washington, c. 1893; divorced 1907; advocate of temperance and “crusader” for eugenic sterilization of unfit (Bingham; Corning 187-88; “Bethenia Owens-Adair“; Jean M. Ward, “Bethenia Owens-Adair“; “Bethenia Owens-Adair“). (1845-?): born in Illinois; daughter of Rev. John F. DeVore, prominent Methodist minister in Oregon and Puget Sound conferences, member, publishing committee, Pacific Christian Advocate (newspaper with which the New Northwest repeatedly clashed editorially), and trustee of Willamette University; emigrated to Oregon, 1853; graduate of Willamette University; “one of the most intelligent women in the State”; on Christmas Day, 1868, married William Carey Johnson, a printer (with Oregon Spectator and Argus), attorney (Oregon City district attorney, 1858; city recorder, 1859; prosecutor for 4th Judicial District, 1862), and Republican politician (ran for legislature, 1857; state senator, 1866); mother of five; like Scott Duniway, active in Woman’s Auxiliary of Oregon Pioneer Association (Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.; Hines 550-51; Hodgkin and Galvin 75; Lang 638-39; Transactions of the Thirty-Fifth 11 [see also the Transactions for 1885, 1889, and 1908]; Republican League 229; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 301-03). Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175). Moynihan, Rebel 9. William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).
U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE – March 7, 1884
Annually since the Civil War, suffragists had petitioned the Congress for voting rights for women, and in this, the nineteenth year of lobbying, Scott Duniway joined the delegation that addressed the Senate in Washington, D.C., the day after the N.W.S.A. convention.1 In a reversal of roles from their 1871 campaign, she was introduced by her […]
Annually since the Civil War, suffragists had petitioned the Congress for voting rights for women, and in this, the nineteenth year of lobbying, Scott Duniway joined the delegation that addressed the Senate in Washington, D.C., the day after the N.W.S.A. convention.<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_1_46" id="identifier_1_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="According to a report in the New Northwest, others in the delegation included: Harriette Robinson Shattuck, author and scholar of parliamentary law, from Massachusetts; May Eliza Wright Sewall, educator, clubwoman, and pacifist, of Indiana; Helen Mar Jackson Gougar, temperance reformer, of Indiana; Mary Seymour Howell, lecturer, of New York; Caroline Gilkey Rogers of New York; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, author and lecturer, of Illinois; Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake of New York; and Susan B. Anthony. This report claims that Scott Duniway spoke seventh (27 Mar. 1884). The New Northwest published speeches by Scott Duniway, Robinson Shattuck and Wright Sewall on April 24, 1884, and by Jackson Gougar and Seymour Howell the following week, May 1. According to the Congressional Record, in which these proceedings were reprinted, also present were Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier, physician, of New York; and Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Massachusetts, who for twenty-five years had protested her status as unrepresented by refusing to pay taxes. This report indicates that Abigail spoke fourth (25 Jan. 1887: 992-96). A third report, in the History of Woman Suffrage, briefly excerpts most of these speeches but ignores Scott Duniway, Harned Lozier, and Wall (4: 36-42). Abigail wrote that she also addressed the House Judiciary Committee the following day, March 8, and the New York state association convention in Albany on March 11-12. History of Woman Suffrage confirms the latter (4: 839), but she is not mentioned in its report of the former (4: 42-47).">1 In a reversal of roles from their 1871 campaign, she was introduced by her mentor, Susan B. Anthony, who called her “the one canvasser in the great State of Oregon and Washington Territory” to whom “the women of Washington Territory are more indebted than to all other influences for their enfranchisement.” Scott Duniway steadfastly appealed to the natural rights principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a strategy particularly well-suited to the Congressional audience she addressed on this occasion. Yet precisely this context casts the fault lines in her approach into especially sharp relief, because they reflect the deeper ambiguities of representative democracy. Scott Duniway acknowledges that, absent the right to vote, women’s only power is nonpolitical, i.e., the power of persuasion; for women to petition over a matter in which they have no voice is an “anomaly.” This predicament accounts for her rhetorical modus operandi, praise; she believed that women could not afford to antagonize the men who would decide their fate. Thus, in typical fashion, this speech praises the pro-suffrage sentiments of western pioneers, appeals to men’s sense of chivalry, and contends that all the best classes favor suffrage. However, she also must justify her petition and so warns that, unless Congress acts, the fate of the “enlightened, educated motherhood of the State of Oregon” will be decided by ignorant men, “many of whom cannot read.” In effect, she asks one class of men to moot the natural right of franchise of another class of men by bestowing it upon women as a class. When is a natural right not a natural right? Like numerous political theorists before and after her, Abigail wrestled mightily with the dilemmas of representative democracy that crystallized in the question of the “educated vote.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_2_46" id="identifier_2_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The nativist undercurrent in Scott Duniway’s argument boiled to the surface in Helen Mar Jackson Gougar’s comments to the committee: “. . . the older empires of the earth are sending to the United States a population drawn very largely from their asylums, penitentiaries, jails and poor-houses. . . . While I would not have you take this right from those men whom we invite to our shores, I do ask you, in the face of this immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying, intelligent, moral, native-born women of America” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 37).">2 As she acknowledges, this was no merely abstract question in Oregon but was made urgent by the requirements for amending the constitution. Had equal suffrage been conferable by simple act of the legislature, it would have come in 1880, and again in 1882. Unquestionably, the further requirement of a popular majority thus was seen as a regrettable third hurdle. Those, including Scott Duniway, who had worked so hard for eleven years or more, came to feel that the legislature, consisting of “intelligent” men representing the “better classes,” already had ratified the justness of their cause–that they had won!–and they could not bring themselves to view the coming popular vote as a true test of its merits; the vote could be only an opportunity for the “ignorant” and “vicious” classes to snatch victory away. It probably is not coincidental that Abigail appears not to have fully formulated this nativist, class argument until after 1880, when the legislature first ratified the amendment; political realities and human nature combined to make its development inevitable.<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_3_46" id="identifier_3_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Certainly the contrast between the enlightened and unwashed had been a part of her rhetoric, and particularly of her optimistic accounts of progress, from the beginning. However, the contrast turned more on differences of intellect and disposition than national origin. Looking ahead to the 1884 campaign in 1880, she predicted: “In the cities and large towns the bulk of the vote against it will be thrown, while the farmers and villagers will be strong for it. The agriculturalists, as a rule, are much more thoughtful and intelligent than the laborers that crowd the cities. The former read and study during much of their spare time, while the latter idle away their leisure hours in gambling dens, saloons and billiard rooms” (New Northwest 9 Dec. 1880). Thus, as more and more immigrants settled in the burgeoning cities, the road to nativism in the early ‘80s was paved. See her address to the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1882. See also the proceedings of the ninth annual convention of O.S.W.S.A., at which a spirited discussion of “universal” suffrage ensued, and at which Abigail called for “intelligent and moral qualifications” for voters (Morning Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881). It was about this time (1883 or so), Leslie Roberts reports, that anxiety about immigration became a factor in the state, due to both the presence of foreign communities in Oregon and news of more pressing problems in the east (150).">3 The simmering racism and nativism in this argument would boil over in recriminations following the June defeat. In a lengthy column in the New Northwest on June 5, Scott Duniway pointed to Michigan, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska, where suffrage amendments had been submitted to the voters and where “an active public campaign by women had only demonstrated how powerless they were to meet an ambushed enemy, with their hands fettered and the foes’ all free.” So, instead of an “open campaign with local and imported speakers,” she had implemented “a silent but vigorous plan” printing “Yes” tickets, organizing county management and employing poll workers. This was the “still hunt” method that Scott Duniway would defend vociferously for the rest of her life. Defeat came not from any failure of strategy but from want of funds to carry it out.<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_4_46" id="identifier_4_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In a remarkable public accounting, approaching a public flogging, in the June 5 issue, Abigail–naming names–revealed that she had raised a mere $1,491 from Eastern suffragists, fully $1,000 of which was given by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell via the American Woman Suffrage Association. She had been promised much more, she wrote, but “the majority of the women of the East were unwilling–or unable–to keep their pledges.” Even when added to $2,480 raised in Oregon and Washington, “a number of small sums donated by friends and members” of O.S.W.S.A., and “large sums” that she “personally borrowed,” the whole “dwindles to nothing when scattered over so great a State–being the pitiful figure of less than $4 for a precinct.”">4 Her means amounted to “a mere pint in the ocean” when measured against anti-suffrage forces “backed by local and national political parties, fed and sustained by the whisky ring of the cities, the ignorance and tyranny of the country, the gamblers and habitues of disreputable houses, and the slums everywhere.” Then, in particularly ugly terms, she blamed defeat on the “sharper-witted” among opposing “ward-strikers” who “kept themselves busy all the day in putting ‘NO’ on all the tickets voted by all the ignorant, blear-eyed, red-nosed, beer-guzzling pauper hordes who flood our land from foreign climes, bringing with them the vices of their barbaric natures and the tyrannical spirit for oppression that they were subjected to themselves when existing under monarchical rule across the seas.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_5_46" id="identifier_5_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Such electoral shenanigans were commonplace in the days before the Australian ballot and other modern reforms brought much-needed order and integrity to the voting process. Oregon did not adopt the secret ballot until 1891 (Dodds 158).">5 Abigail, like so many others, never could resolve the tension between a natural rights defense of equal suffrage and its practical consequences.<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_6_46" id="identifier_6_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Two weeks later (June 19, 1884), the New Northwest would print a letter from “a foreigner of Clatsop County” who took exception to Scott Duniway’s comments. She replied lamely that “we did not unqualifiedly criticize all foreigners,” conceded that “the better element among the foreign vote was and is on the side of right and justice,” but insisted that “this does not alter the fact that nine out of ten foreigners, as a whole, were opposed to the measure.” Eight years later, she was still discoursing at length on the dangers of the foreign vote; see “Woman Suffrage and the Republican Party.”">6 The text is taken from the Congressional Record, January 25, 1887. This version, published three years after the fact, is substantially similar to, but more complete than, the New Northwest‘s more contemporaneous report. Material only in the Record appears in “[ ]”; other minor differences are footnoted. Gentlemen of the committee: Do you think it possible that an agitation like this can go on and on forever without a victory? Do you not see that the golden moment has come for this [grand] committee to achieve immortality upon the grandest idea that has ever stirred the heartbeats of American citizens, and will you not in the magnanimity of noble purposes rise to meet the situation and accede to our demand, which in your hearts you must know is just? [I do not come before you, gentlemen, with the expectation to instruct you in regard to the laws of our country. The women around us are law-abiding women. They are the mothers, many of them, of true and noble men, the wives, many of them, of grand, free husbands, who are listening, watching, waiting eagerly for successful tidings of this great experiment.] There never was a grander theory of government than that of these7 United States. Never were grander principles enunciated upon any platform, never so grand before and never can be grander again, than the declaration that “all men,” including of course all women, since women are amenable to the laws, “are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights * * * that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Gentlemen, are we allowed the opportunity of consent? These women who are here from Maine to Oregon, from the Straits of Fuca<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_8_46" id="identifier_8_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The straits on the southern side of Vancouver Island, which enter into Puget Sound. Named after Juan de Fuca (a name assumed by Greek seaman Apostolas Valerinos in connection with his service to Spain), who allegedly discovered them in 1592; this story’s historical accuracy was contested in the Oregon press in the 1880s (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 140-46).">8 to the reefs of Florida, who in their representative capacity have come up here so often, augmented in their numbers year by year, looking with eyes of hope and hearts of faith, but oftentimes with hopes deferred, upon the final solution of this great problem, which it is so much in your hands to hasten its solution–these women are in earnest. My State is far away beyond the confines of the Rocky Mountains, away over beside the singing Pacific sea, but the spirit of liberty is among us there, and the public heart has been stirred. The hearts of our men have been moved to listen to our demands, and in Washington Territory, as one speaker has informed you, women to-day are endowed with full and free enfranchisement, and the rejoicing throughout that Territory is universal. In Oregon men have also listened to our demand, and the Legislature has in two successive sessions agreed upon a proposition to amend our State constitution, a proposition which will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the [coming] June election. It is simply a proposition declaring that the right of suffrage shall not hereafter be prohibited in the State of Oregon on account of sex. Your action in the Senate of the United States will greatly determine the action of the voters of Oregon on our, or rather on their, election day, for we stand before the public in the anomaly of petitioners upon a great question in which we, in its final decision, are allowed no voice, and we can only stand with expectant hearts and almost bated breath awaiting the action of men who are to make this decision. We have great hope for our victory, because the men of the broad[, free] West are [grand, and] chivalrous[,] and free. They have gone across the mighty continent with free steps; they have raised the standard of a new Pacific empire; they have imbibed the spirit of liberty with their very breath, and they have listened to us far in advance of many of the men of the older States who have not had their opportunity among the grand free wilds of nature for expansion. So all of our leaders are with us to-day. You may go to either member of the Senate of the United States from Oregon, and while I cannot speak so positively for the senior member<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_9_46" id="identifier_9_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Harvey Slater (1826-1899): Congressman, editor; born near Springfield, Illinois; came to California, 1849, and to Oregon, 1850, settling at Corvallis; admitted to bar, 1854; clerk, U.S. District Court, 1854-56; territorial legislator, 1857-59; owner/editor, Oregon Weekly Union, 1859-61; state legislator, 1859-60; moved to Baker City, 1862, and to La Grande, 1866; state district attorney, 1866-68; U.S. House, 1871-73; U.S. Senate, 1879-85; state railroad commissioner, 1887-89; leader, anti-Asahel Bush faction, Democratic party (Corning 226; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 276-77).">9, as he came over here some years ago before the public were so well educated as now, I can and do proudly vouch for the late Senator-elect Dolph<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_10_46" id="identifier_10_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135).">10, who now has a seat upon the floor of the Senate, who is heart and soul and hand and purse in sympathy with this great movement for the enfranchisement of the women of Oregon. I would also be unjust to our worthy representative in the lower house, Hon. M. C. George<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_11_46" id="identifier_11_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Melvin Clark George (1849-1933): educator, lawyer, congressman; born in Ohio; came to Oregon with parents, 1851; admitted to Oregon bar, 1875; principal of Albany schools; state senator, 1876-80; U.S. Representative, 1880-84; circuit judge, 1897-1905 (Corning 98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 53-54; Who’s Who in Oregon 90).">11, did I not proudly speak his name in this great connection. Men of this class are with us, and without regard to party affiliations we know that they are upon our side. Our governor<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_12_46" id="identifier_12_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Zenas Ferry Moody (1832-1917): born Granby, Massachusetts; came to Oregon via Panama, 1851; married Mary Stephenson, 1853; after brief period in Illinois, established mercantile business at The Dalles, 1862; surveyor; transportation business (leading shipper of eastern Oregon wool); Speaker, Oregon House of Representatives, 1880-82; Governor, 1883-87; Republican (Corning 169; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 376-81; Who was Who 857).">12, our associate supreme13 judge for the district of the Pacific<a href="https://asduniway.org/u-s-senate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-march-7-1884/#footnote_14_46" id="identifier_14_46" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="New Northwest: “Pacific Northwest.” Stephen Johnson Field (1816-1899): jurist; born Haddam, Connecticut; valedictorian, Williams College, 1833-37; entered legal study, 1838; admitted to New York bar, 1841, where he practiced until 1848; moved to Marysville, in California gold fields, 1849; elected to state legislature, 1850; elected to state supreme court, 1857; married Virginia Swearingen, 1859; confirmed to new U.S. Supreme Court justiceship and attendant ninth circuit judgeship, 1863 (Lincoln’s final appointee); “few more convinced doctrinaires in constitutional exegesis have ever sat on the supreme bench”; retired, 1897; authored 1,042 opinions, 620 on Supreme Court; Democrat (Corwin).">14, all of these men, are leading in the grand free way that characterizes the men of the West in assisting in this work. But we have–alas, that I should be compelled to say it–a great many men who pay no heed whatever to this question. Men will be entitled to a voice in this decision who are not, like members of Congress, the picked men of the nation or the State, but men, many of whom can not read, who will have an opportunity to decide this question as far as their ballots can go. These are they to whom the enlightened, educated motherhood of the State of Oregon must look largely for the decision. This brings me to the [grand] point of our coming to Congress. Some of you say to us, “Why not leave this matter for settlement in the different States?” When we leave it for settlement in the different States we leave it just as I have told you, because of the constitutional provisions of our organic law we can not do otherwise; but if the question were to be settled by the Legislature of Oregon alone it would be settled now; and I, as a representative of that State only, would have no need of coming here; it would be settled just as it has been settled in Washington Territory; but when we come here to Congress it is the great nation asking you to take such legislative action in submitting an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as shall recognize the equality of these women who are here; these women who have come here from all parts of the country, whose constituents are looking on while we are here before you. As we reflect that our feeblest words uttered before this committee will go to the confines of this nation [and be cabled] across the great Atlantic and around the globe, we realize that more and more prominently our cause is growing into public favor, and the time is just upon us when some decision must be made. Gentlemen of the committee, will you not recognize the importance of the movement? Who among you will be our standard-bearer? Who among you will achieve immortality by standing up in these halls in which we are forbidden to speak, and in the magnanimity of your own free wills and noble hearts champion the woman’s cause and make us before the law, as we of right ought now to be, free and independent? NOTES According to a report in the New Northwest, others in the delegation included: Harriette Robinson Shattuck, author and scholar of parliamentary law, from Massachusetts; May Eliza Wright Sewall, educator, clubwoman, and pacifist, of Indiana; Helen Mar Jackson Gougar, temperance reformer, of Indiana; Mary Seymour Howell, lecturer, of New York; Caroline Gilkey Rogers of New York; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, author and lecturer, of Illinois; Elizabeth Johnson Devereaux Blake of New York; and Susan B. Anthony. This report claims that Scott Duniway spoke seventh (27 Mar. 1884). The New Northwest published speeches by Scott Duniway, Robinson Shattuck and Wright Sewall on April 24, 1884, and by Jackson Gougar and Seymour Howell the following week, May 1. According to the Congressional Record, in which these proceedings were reprinted, also present were Dr. Clemence Sophia Harned Lozier, physician, of New York; and Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Massachusetts, who for twenty-five years had protested her status as unrepresented by refusing to pay taxes. This report indicates that Abigail spoke fourth (25 Jan. 1887: 992-96). A third report, in the History of Woman Suffrage, briefly excerpts most of these speeches but ignores Scott Duniway, Harned Lozier, and Wall (4: 36-42). Abigail wrote that she also addressed the House Judiciary Committee the following day, March 8, and the New York state association convention in Albany on March 11-12. History of Woman Suffrage confirms the latter (4: 839), but she is not mentioned in its report of the former (4: 42-47). The nativist undercurrent in Scott Duniway’s argument boiled to the surface in Helen Mar Jackson Gougar’s comments to the committee: “. . . the older empires of the earth are sending to the United States a population drawn very largely from their asylums, penitentiaries, jails and poor-houses. . . . While I would not have you take this right from those men whom we invite to our shores, I do ask you, in the face of this immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying, intelligent, moral, native-born women of America” (History of Woman Suffrage 4: 37). Certainly the contrast between the enlightened and unwashed had been a part of her rhetoric, and particularly of her optimistic accounts of progress, from the beginning. However, the contrast turned more on differences of intellect and disposition than national origin. Looking ahead to the 1884 campaign in 1880, she predicted: “In the cities and large towns the bulk of the vote against it will be thrown, while the farmers and villagers will be strong for it. The agriculturalists, as a rule, are much more thoughtful and intelligent than the laborers that crowd the cities. The former read and study during much of their spare time, while the latter idle away their leisure hours in gambling dens, saloons and billiard rooms” (New Northwest 9 Dec. 1880). Thus, as more and more immigrants settled in the burgeoning cities, the road to nativism in the early ‘80s was paved. See her address to the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1882. See also the proceedings of the ninth annual convention of O.S.W.S.A., at which a spirited discussion of “universal” suffrage ensued, and at which Abigail called for “intelligent and moral qualifications” for voters (Morning Oregonian 10 Feb. 1881). It was about this time (1883 or so), Leslie Roberts reports, that anxiety about immigration became a factor in the state, due to both the presence of foreign communities in Oregon and news of more pressing problems in the east (150). In a remarkable public accounting, approaching a public flogging, in the June 5 issue, Abigail–naming names–revealed that she had raised a mere $1,491 from Eastern suffragists, fully $1,000 of which was given by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell via the American Woman Suffrage Association. She had been promised much more, she wrote, but “the majority of the women of the East were unwilling–or unable–to keep their pledges.” Even when added to $2,480 raised in Oregon and Washington, “a number of small sums donated by friends and members” of O.S.W.S.A., and “large sums” that she “personally borrowed,” the whole “dwindles to nothing when scattered over so great a State–being the pitiful figure of less than $4 for a precinct.” Such electoral shenanigans were commonplace in the days before the Australian ballot and other modern reforms brought much-needed order and integrity to the voting process. Oregon did not adopt the secret ballot until 1891 (Dodds 158). Two weeks later (June 19, 1884), the New Northwest would print a letter from “a foreigner of Clatsop County” who took exception to Scott Duniway’s comments. She replied lamely that “we did not unqualifiedly criticize all foreigners,” conceded that “the better element among the foreign vote was and is on the side of right and justice,” but insisted that “this does not alter the fact that nine out of ten foreigners, as a whole, were opposed to the measure.” Eight years later, she was still discoursing at length on the dangers of the foreign vote; see “Woman Suffrage and the Republican Party.” New Northwest: “the” The straits on the southern side of Vancouver Island, which enter into Puget Sound. Named after Juan de Fuca (a name assumed by Greek seaman Apostolas Valerinos in connection with his service to Spain), who allegedly discovered them in 1592; this story’s historical accuracy was contested in the Oregon press in the 1880s (Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 140-46). James Harvey Slater (1826-1899): Congressman, editor; born near Springfield, Illinois; came to California, 1849, and to Oregon, 1850, settling at Corvallis; admitted to bar, 1854; clerk, U.S. District Court, 1854-56; territorial legislator, 1857-59; owner/editor, Oregon Weekly Union, 1859-61; state legislator, 1859-60; moved to Baker City, 1862, and to La Grande, 1866; state district attorney, 1866-68; U.S. House, 1871-73; U.S. Senate, 1879-85; state railroad commissioner, 1887-89; leader, anti-Asahel Bush faction, Democratic party (Corning 226; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 276-77). Joseph Norton Dolph (1835-1897): born Schuyler County, New York; admitted to bar, 1861; enlisted in Oregon Escort, company of militia authorized by Congress to escort emigrants to territory, 1862; married Augusta Mulkey; practiced law, Portland, 1862-83; U.S. district attorney, 1865-66; state senator, 1866-68 and 1872-76; U.S. Senator, 1883-95; Republican; John Hipple Mitchell’s law partner (Corning 74; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 180-83; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 3: 135). Melvin Clark George (1849-1933): educator, lawyer, congressman; born in Ohio; came to Oregon with parents, 1851; admitted to Oregon bar, 1875; principal of Albany schools; state senator, 1876-80; U.S. Representative, 1880-84; circuit judge, 1897-1905 (Corning 98; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 53-54; Who’s Who in Oregon 90). Zenas Ferry Moody (1832-1917): born Granby, Massachusetts; came to Oregon via Panama, 1851; married Mary Stephenson, 1853; after brief period in Illinois, established mercantile business at The Dalles, 1862; surveyor; transportation business (leading shipper of eastern Oregon wool); Speaker, Oregon House of Representatives, 1880-82; Governor, 1883-87; Republican (Corning 169; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 376-81; Who was Who 857). New Northwest substitutes “United States” New Northwest: “Pacific Northwest.” Stephen Johnson Field (1816-1899): jurist; born Haddam, Connecticut; valedictorian, Williams College, 1833-37; entered legal study, 1838; admitted to New York bar, 1841, where he practiced until 1848; moved to Marysville, in California gold fields, 1849; elected to state legislature, 1850; elected to state supreme court, 1857; married Virginia Swearingen, 1859; confirmed to new U.S. Supreme Court justiceship and attendant ninth circuit judgeship, 1863 (Lincoln’s final appointee); “few more convinced doctrinaires in constitutional exegesis have ever sat on the supreme bench”; retired, 1897; authored 1,042 opinions, 620 on Supreme Court; Democrat (Corwin).
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION CONVENTION – March 4, 1884
Although she devoted most of her energies to the cause in the Pacific Northwest, Scott Duniway also maintained a prominent national presence. From the day in 1871 that she invited Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who were on a lecture tour in California, to come to Oregon1, she was a figure to be […]
Although she devoted most of her energies to the cause in the Pacific Northwest, Scott Duniway also maintained a prominent national presence. From the day in 1871 that she invited Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who were on a lecture tour in California, to come to Oregon1, she was a figure to be reckoned with in the East as well. Regularly she would talk her way across the country to suffrage conventions, where she would apprise the gatherings of the progress of campaigns in her region and lobby for financial and other support.<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_2_44" id="identifier_2_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The National Woman Suffrage Association convention in New York in May, 1872, had been Scott Duniway’s first (History of Woman Suffrage 2: 516, 4: 773; see also About Scott Duniway n. 19). O.S.W.S.A. and Scott Duniway tended to identify with Anthony’s and Cady Stanton’s New York-based N.W.S.A. more than Lucy Stone’s more conservative, Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association. However, Abigail plowed both fields. She exchanged papers with the Woman’s Journal, appeared regularly in it, and reprinted its columns in the New Northwest (Moynihan, Rebel 91-92). She attended A.W.S.A. conventions at least twice: 1876, in Philadelphia, and 1885, in Minneapolis, where she also spoke at the Jackson Street Methodist Church and the Minnesota state convention. In Minnesota, as always, she made a strong impression. One local paper called her discussion of women and jury service “just a little suggestive”: “Mrs. Duniway has the faculty of saying some of the brightest things in the most disagreeable manner of any lady in the convention.” At the state convention, she became involved in a “lively little tempest” with W.C.T.U. women (New Northwest 22 Oct. 1885, 29 Oct. 1885; Minneapolis Tribune 15 Oct. 1885, 16 Oct. 1885; St. Paul and Minneapolis Pioneer Press 16 Oct. 1885, 17 Oct. 1885).">2 She necessarily walked a fine line, being optimistic about the future but arguing that help was urgently needed. And her position would grow increasingly tenuous as she clashed with other suffrage leaders over strategy; it became awkward, to say the least, to rail against “the National’s” interference while asking it for money. Yet, despite the very real enmity that eventually arose between Scott Duniway and some others, she retained sufficient stature to bring the N.A.W.S.A.3 convention to Portland in 1905. The following address was delivered in 1884, at the opening session of the sixteenth national convention, meeting in Lincoln Hall in the nation’s capitol.<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_4_44" id="identifier_4_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Scott Duniway was elected a Vice-President-At-Large of the national association at this convention. For a report of the convention and her activities, see History of Woman Suffrage (4: 14-30, esp. 16, 27). A handwritten notation on the original, dating the speech in February, is, therefore, incorrect.">4 Imminent was the suffrage campaign of 1884, which Scott Duniway hoped would ratify the legislature’s actions of 1880 and 1882, thereby finally bringing the vote to Oregon’s women. Mindful of this upcoming campaign, Abigail reports the progress of the cause and pleads for aid, employing many of her favorite appeals.<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_5_44" id="identifier_5_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="While Abigail already had quarreled with other state leaders over campaign tactics, she wisely does not air her doubts here. On the contrary, the strategy she outlines–to hold meetings “in every precinct” and “literally snow the country over” with campaign materials–better reflects the “hurrah” campaign advocated by her friend Hattie Loughary than her preferred “still hunt” method. Later she would disown these public tactics and claim that she had tried to run a campaign of quiet persuasion (“U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage“). But her national audience would have been familiar with the “noisy” strategy and, because it was expensive, her plea for aid conveniently would have seemed more urgent. Disagreements over strategy had not yet redefined Scott Duniway’s relationships with Eastern leaders; within weeks, however, this would change (Moynihan, Rebel 179; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 193).">5 She vigorously advocates suffrage based on principle or justice, rather than expediency, employing typical catch-phrases such as “taxation without representation” and “government by consent” that invoke the American revolution. She appeals to chivalry, to men’s better instincts and their respect for their wives and mothers. On the other hand, she also appeals to guilt, observing that lack of suffrage classes women with “idiots, insane persons, criminals, and Chinamen.” Implying that the Pacific Northwest promises an especially good return on the National’s investment, she constructs a historical narrative that portrays the region as particularly fertile ground for woman’s rights. Positioning the Donation Land Law as central to this narrative reveals her abiding concern for women’s economic rights. Finally, the collective “we” notwithstanding, she personalizes the efforts on behalf of woman’s rights in Oregon, and the recent victory in Washington Territory, as her efforts, even repeating almost verbatim her report to O.S.W.S.A. of three weeks before. It is difficult to know whether her immediate audience, or her friends and co-workers back home, received this report with equanimity or, instead, saw it as self-aggrandizing. The text is taken from Scrapbook #2, Abigail Scott Duniway Papers (18). Unfortunately, it is incomplete; an undetermined portion at the beginning is missing. In 1850, Oregon’s first Delegate to Congress, Hon. Samuel R. Thurston<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_6_44" id="identifier_6_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242).">6, enlarging a plan proposed by Dr. Linn, of Missouri<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_7_44" id="identifier_7_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lewis Fields Linn (1795-1843): born near Louisville, Kentucky; surgeon in War of 1812; studied medicine and established practice at Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, 1816; member, Missouri state senate, 1827; appointed to French Land Claims Commission, 1832; U.S. Senator as Jacksonian, 1833-37, then Democrat, 1837-43; by succession of bills promoting occupation of Oregon, including donation land law providing liberal land grants to American settlers, helped precipitate crisis in simmering border dispute with Great Britain, which James K. Polk rode to the Presidency in 1844 with the famous slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight”; Linn Counties in Missouri and Oregon named for him (Corning 149; “Lewis Fields Linn”; “Linn, Lewis Fields“).">7, succeeded in securing the passage of an act known as the Oregon Donation Land Law.<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_8_44" id="identifier_8_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">8 This act was chiefly remarkable because it recognized in its provisions the right of a married woman, in propria persona, to an equal share with her husband in its benefits, thus making Oregon soil the first part of the United States domain on which equal rights for women found a practical footing. This Donation Land Law, though exceptional as to particulars and temporary induration, was destined to mark the beginning of an era of momentous import to the women of the present and the future. Under the provisions of this act, a woman, if married, was entitled to such equal portion of the public domain as might, under comparatively equal restrictions, accrue to her husband. All of the married women who were living in Oregon at the time of the passage of the act, and all others who came to Oregon within the duration of the act, as well as many who were married while yet mere children in order to come within the provisions of the act, took advantage of its benefits and became free-holders. They resided upon and cultivated their own land, as required by law, and became its possessors de facto, although many of them in so doing had never troubled their heads about political rights. But the Members of Congress who had assisted them to the position of free-holders builded better than they knew. They were like the Puritans, who, in planting the standard of the cross in a new country, raised also the standard of civil and political liberty, although they knew it not. The limitations of the Donation Land Law expired in a few brief years, but the effects remained and are to be seen today all over Oregon and Washington, which was once known as the “whole of Oregon,” among the women who were the recipients of its benefits, who yet live under their own vines and fig-trees, with none to molest or make them afraid. But there were thousands of other married women, younger than they, or who failed to reach Oregon in time to secure the benefits of the act, who found themselves, like the women of other portions of these United States and Territories of America, in the condition of perpetual minority–classed with idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen–and naturally enough they began to wonder if their right to acquire property was not inalienable. And although their general up-waking was not immediate, it was gradual and thorough; and as the years advanced and they saw more and more clearly the benefits to be derived by a few women from the possession and ownership of their homes, the query arose in their minds, “Why may we possess no lands?” And then the fact dawned upon them that, although it was only the comparatively few of the sex who had been so situated that they might avail themselves of the donation act, there was no good reason why all women ought not to be recognized as persons, under the law, equally with men, now and always. And they began to think, to ask questions; and the questions always resolved themselves into the one final query, “Why are we without a country?” One question led to another, till they said at last: “Isn’t taxation without representation called tyranny in the Declaration of Independence? Don’t the women who own the land pay taxes? And, since governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and we are not allowed to give or withhold consent, why are women taxed at all?” Gradually, as the years rolled on, these thoughts grew more definite and tangible, and at last, in the year 1871, more than twenty years after the beneficent foresight of women’s friends in Congress had set the ball in motion, the first organized attempt was made to secure those rights to women which men had for a hundred years enjoyed, and which they had declared to be inalienable when applied to themselves. As the sequel has thus far proven, the hearts of the men of the great Pacific Northwest were right toward women, even in the beginning. No sooner had we begun to agitate the question of equal rights than men responded to our plea; and the result was, first, the establishing, in 1871, and its maintenance ever since, of a weekly journal, the New Northwest, devoted to the promulgation of equal political and financial rights between the sexes; and secondly, to the respectful bombardment of biennial Legislatures with the pleas, plans and purposes of women, who made the paper their standard-bearer, and who had learned to recognize the ballot as the basis of all rights under any government claiming to be “of the people and by the people.” Favorable legislation followed every attempt made by women to “secure those rights for which governments are instituted among men,” but the final victory seemed each year afar off. Men appeared quite willing at all times to grant us favors. They were chivalrous, and, in a certain indefinable way, valiant and magnanimous, but they were slow to learn that woman was as complete in her individuality, her selfhood, as themselves.9 But the agitation went regularly forward, and one by one the relics of the old common law were supplanted by new enactments, until women saw their civil rights acknowledged, and their property rights better defended every year. And at last men decided that their wives and mothers should be classed no longer with idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen. So they proposed, in 1880, to amend the State Constitution by submitting to the next succeeding session of the Legislature a resolution which says, simply and grandly, “The elective franchise shall not hereafter be prohibited in this State on account of sex.” This proposition, which was acceded to by a large majority in both branches of the Legislature in 1880, and ratified in 1882 by an overwhelming vote, now awaits the final decision of the voters of the State at the approaching June election. It is this fact that gives us our prominence and makes Oregon the objective point of this Association’s consideration now and in the immediate future. The way before us is plain and our duty is clear. The old statutory laws that enforced invidious distinctions between the property rights of men and women are nearly all dead and buried, and our women are now in the exact condition of the Colonists when the Declaration of Independence awaited ratification by the British crown. We have a hard, decisive, bloodless battle to fight; and those most interested–the women themselves–are armed with no ballots or other sinews of war with which to fight it. But we have right on our side, and we await the issue with confidence. Washington Territory, which has from the beginning of the agitation of the great question that convenes us shared equally with Oregon in all that has been done to enfranchise one-half of the people, no longer figures among existing powers as a suppliant. The ban of disenfranchisement has fallen from the shoulders of her women, representatives of whom are among us to-day, clothed with the equal political power which came to their sons unasked as soon as they had reared them to the age of 21 years. In struggling to secure the final recognition of political rights to the women of Washington, I found it necessary to canvass the Territory over and over for upward of twelve years, holding meetings everywhere, traveling by stage, rail, steamer, and often afoot among the people, holding meetings in cities, precincts and villages, speaking sometimes in churches, sometimes in school-houses, sometimes in court-houses and public halls, and when, as occasionally happened, all these were closed against me because of existing prejudice against the cause, addressing the public in bar-rooms and offices of hotels, meeting discouragements often, but encountering a goodly degree of kindly assistance in all parts of the country, and in every case circulating the New Northwest and “writing up” the different localities in editorial letters, that the paper and its contents would be sought for and read and commented upon long after I had gone to other fields. To one who has not traversed these vast regions thus hurriedly alluded to, no brief outline can convey an idea of their magnitude, nor can such a person imagine the hardships connected with the work. But the cause grew and prospered, and each succeeding session of the Legislature showed marked progress among the people’s representatives, until at last the work was finished by the assembly of 1883; and the immortal act that enfranchised the women of the State that is to bear the name of Washington, and thus make her the “mother of her country,” reached its climax when Governor Newell<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_10_44" id="identifier_10_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).">10 signed the suffrage bill amid the mingling hallelujahs of booming guns and ringing bells. In Oregon the work has kept more than even pace with Washington, though, by virtue of her State government, she has a longer road to travel, and we can only reach the goal of our ambition by a more circuitous route.<a href="https://asduniway.org/national-woman-suffrage-association-convention-march-4-1884/#footnote_11_44" id="identifier_11_44" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In Washington, suffrage could be, and was, adopted by a simple vote of both houses of the territorial legislature. Oregon law was more onerous, requiring that amendments to the state Constitution first be approved by two successive legislatures and then by a majority of voters (“Oregon State Senate“).">11 The same long, laborious, patient canvass has been made here as there, and the same obstacles have been met and overcome in carrying on the work. Distributing my own labors abroad equally on both sides of the Columbia River, I have traveled each year many thousands of miles, and spoken in each geographical division an average of seventy times per year, during a period of twelve and a half years’ duration, making, at a low estimate, 1750 public speeches, or nearly five years of steady speaking. Immediately after my return to Oregon (about April 1st), the campaign will begin in earnest. We must hold meetings in every precinct, and literally snow the country over with campaign documents. The canvass will be most expensive. The distances are great between points, and we need a vast sum to defray traveling expenses. We need speakers, we need documents, but, above all, we need money. Will you help us? We are more than gratified at the success attendant upon our work thus far. Leading politicians of all parties are in perfect accord with our movement, and are working with and for us with the intent to win. The movement stands alone upon its own merit. The question with us is not one of expediency, but of right. We do not ask any man to give up his political or partisan bias, his religious or nonreligious views, or his temperance or anti-temperance ideas. All we ask is that when he casts his vote next June he will vote “Yes” upon the pending Woman Suffrage Amendment. You are respectfully asked to join with us in the great campaign, to concentrate your efforts upon Oregon. Our neighbor women across the Columbia are watching us from their vantage ground with mingled feelings of hope for us and exultation among themselves. We believe that our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are quite as chivalrous and progressive as their own; and we believe they will prove that our faith in them is well founded when the ballots are counted after election, and that we shall find ourselves invited to stand with them upon the broad platform of freedom, equality and justice, now jointly occupied by themselves and the men and women of Washington Territory. The Territory of Idaho has also received considerable of my attention, and there is a strong and constantly growing sentiment there in favor of equal rights for women. It is among the probabilities that when next her Legislature meets she will wheel into line with all her people free.12 Help us to win a victory in Oregon, and our success will lead at last to your triumph on this side of our common country. NOTES Stanton declined (which disappointed Scott Duniway, for Stanton was the more powerful orator), but Anthony accepted, embarking with Scott Duniway on their three-month and thousand-mile campaign (Edwards, Sowing). The National Woman Suffrage Association convention in New York in May, 1872, had been Scott Duniway’s first (History of Woman Suffrage 2: 516, 4: 773; see also About Scott Duniway n. 19). O.S.W.S.A. and Scott Duniway tended to identify with Anthony’s and Cady Stanton’s New York-based N.W.S.A. more than Lucy Stone’s more conservative, Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association. However, Abigail plowed both fields. She exchanged papers with the Woman’s Journal, appeared regularly in it, and reprinted its columns in the New Northwest (Moynihan, Rebel 91-92). She attended A.W.S.A. conventions at least twice: 1876, in Philadelphia, and 1885, in Minneapolis, where she also spoke at the Jackson Street Methodist Church and the Minnesota state convention. In Minnesota, as always, she made a strong impression. One local paper called her discussion of women and jury service “just a little suggestive”: “Mrs. Duniway has the faculty of saying some of the brightest things in the most disagreeable manner of any lady in the convention.” At the state convention, she became involved in a “lively little tempest” with W.C.T.U. women (New Northwest 22 Oct. 1885, 29 Oct. 1885; Minneapolis Tribune 15 Oct. 1885, 16 Oct. 1885; St. Paul and Minneapolis Pioneer Press 16 Oct. 1885, 17 Oct. 1885). National American Woman Suffrage Association, into which the N.W.S.A. and A.W.S.A. merged in 1890. Scott Duniway was elected a Vice-President-At-Large of the national association at this convention. For a report of the convention and her activities, see History of Woman Suffrage (4: 14-30, esp. 16, 27). A handwritten notation on the original, dating the speech in February, is, therefore, incorrect. While Abigail already had quarreled with other state leaders over campaign tactics, she wisely does not air her doubts here. On the contrary, the strategy she outlines–to hold meetings “in every precinct” and “literally snow the country over” with campaign materials–better reflects the “hurrah” campaign advocated by her friend Hattie Loughary than her preferred “still hunt” method. Later she would disown these public tactics and claim that she had tried to run a campaign of quiet persuasion (“U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage“). But her national audience would have been familiar with the “noisy” strategy and, because it was expensive, her plea for aid conveniently would have seemed more urgent. Disagreements over strategy had not yet redefined Scott Duniway’s relationships with Eastern leaders; within weeks, however, this would change (Moynihan, Rebel 179; A. Duniway, Path Breaking 193). Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242). Lewis Fields Linn (1795-1843): born near Louisville, Kentucky; surgeon in War of 1812; studied medicine and established practice at Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, 1816; member, Missouri state senate, 1827; appointed to French Land Claims Commission, 1832; U.S. Senator as Jacksonian, 1833-37, then Democrat, 1837-43; by succession of bills promoting occupation of Oregon, including donation land law providing liberal land grants to American settlers, helped precipitate crisis in simmering border dispute with Great Britain, which James K. Polk rode to the Presidency in 1844 with the famous slogan, “Fifty-four-forty or fight”; Linn Counties in Missouri and Oregon named for him (Corning 149; “Lewis Fields Linn”; “Linn, Lewis Fields“). An 1850 act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). This observation predates Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s justly famous “Solitude of Self” address by eight years. William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282). In Washington, suffrage could be, and was, adopted by a simple vote of both houses of the territorial legislature. Oregon law was more onerous, requiring that amendments to the state Constitution first be approved by two successive legislatures and then by a majority of voters (“Oregon State Senate“). This prediction was overly optimistic; equal suffrage would not come to Idaho for twelve more years.
OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 12, 1884
When the O.S.W.S.A.. convened in Turn Halle this Tuesday morning for its twelfth annual meeting, the excitement must have been palpable. For, as President Hattie Loughary1 put it, the circumstances were “peculiarly interesting and encouraging.” Just three months before, the Washington legislature had conferred suffrage upon the women of that territory.2 And just four months […]
When the O.S.W.S.A.. convened in Turn Halle this Tuesday morning for its twelfth annual meeting, the excitement must have been palpable. For, as President Hattie Loughary<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-12-1884/#footnote_1_41" id="identifier_1_41" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175).">1 put it, the circumstances were “peculiarly interesting and encouraging.” Just three months before, the Washington legislature had conferred suffrage upon the women of that territory.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-12-1884/#footnote_2_41" id="identifier_2_41" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="By votes of 14-7 in the house and 7-5 in the council. According to historian T. A. Larson’s demographic analysis of the legislators, victory was not explained by marital status, place of birth, political party affiliation, age, years of residence in the territory, or religion, but by occupation: Farmers supported the bill eleven to two while twenty nonfarmers were evenly divided (“Washington” 52-53).">2 And just four months hence, in June, the voters of Oregon would have an opportunity to do the same. Thus, while Scott Duniway’s reports of progress in the cause were invariably optimistic, perhaps at no other time was this optimism felt so genuinely and keenly; victory must have seemed very close, indeed. Some suffrage supporters had tried–and failed–to keep her away from the 1883 legislative session in Olympia, fearing that her combativeness would do more harm than good. The newspapers were divided about her: One praised her for having “done more to originate and sustain” the suffrage cause “than any thousand men and women on the Coast,” but a second complained about women, “utterly devoid of judgment or tact, with a sole desire for their own notoriety and aggrandizement,” who have made themselves a “nuisance,” and a third alleged that supporters of the bill believed that if “Mrs. Duniway would not claim it as her victory the bill would pass”3 Nonetheless, after laboring so long and hard there, it is entirely understandable that Scott Duniway would claim credit for the Washington triumph, as this report of her activities as O.S.W.S.A. Vice President at Large does. Not everyone agreed, of course. Even this report provoked “many sharp speeches” before it finally was accepted. One perpetual antagonist, Dr. Mary Anna Cooke Thompson<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-12-1884/#footnote_4_41" id="identifier_4_41" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1825-1919): physician whose practice focused on women’s medicine, particularly childbirth; born New York City; married Reuben Thompson (?-1885), LaSalle, Illinois, 1847; studied medicine with Drs. Bry and Larkin in LaSalle in time before most medical schools accepted women; said to have been first woman practitioner in Illinois and Iowa; Portland’s first woman physician, 1867, where she practiced for twenty years; provided for six children and (like Scott Duniway) incapacitated husband; charter member, O.S.W.S.A., and prohibitionist who believed in women’s natural moral superiority, sparring constantly with Scott Duniway over movement goals; “one of the most influential women” in Portland history (Corning 243; Larsell 414; Moynihan, Rebel 147, 149, 187; Woman’s Tribune 29 Feb. 1908).">4, spoke for temperance, “making prophecies as to what women would do with whisky and the social evil,” prompting Abigail to advise “stroking men the right way” and waiting “till they got the ballot before they made any pledges.” But at least partial vindication of her contribution would come to Scott Duniway the following afternoon, when a Mrs. Woodruff of Fort Canby, representing the women of Seattle, would present her with a penciled sketch of “Liberty” and a banner bearing on one side the word Victory in gold silk on white satin, surrounded by a laurel wreath, and on the other the star spangled banner. Mrs. Woodruff would say, in part: “While we were lotus-eating, while we were willing slaves to chance, [Scott Duniway] was busy, pioneering a better inheritance for us. While we slept she was fighting ‘wild beasts at Ephesus,’ to obtain for us the right in secular laws which the laws of God ordained. . . . Proud ought Oregon to be in the possession of a woman capable of leading, of blazing the way, to such exalted attainments in the future.”5 Undoubtedly, Abigail basked in the recognition that she believed was fully her due. The text is taken from the New Northwest’s report of the convention proceedings, February 14, 1884. A nearly identical version appeared in the Oregonian on February 13, differing primarily in capitalization and punctuation. To the Officers and Members of the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association, greeting: Since last we met in this deliberative body, the most important progress ever yet attained in the prosecution of the Association work has been made. Washington Territory, which has from the beginning of the agitation of the great question that convenes us shared equally with Oregon in all that has been done to enfranchise one-half of the people, no longer figures among existing powers as a suppliant. The ban of disenfranchisement has fallen from the shoulders of her women, representatives of whom are among us to-day, clothed with the equal political power which came to their sons unasked as soon as they had reared them to the age of 21 years. In struggling to secure the final recognition of political rights to the women of Washington, I found it necessary to canvass the Territory over and over for upward6 of twelve long years, holding meetings everywhere, traveling by stage, rail, steamer, and often afoot among the people, holding meetings in cities, precincts and villages, speaking sometimes in churches, sometimes in school-houses, sometimes in court-houses and public halls, and when, as occasionally happened, all these were closed against me because of existing prejudices against the cause, addressing the public in bar-rooms and offices of hotels, meeting discouragements often, but encountering a goodly degree of kindly assistance in all parts of the country, and in every case circulating the New Northwest and7 “writing up” the different localities in editorial letters, that the paper and its contents would be sought for and read and commented upon long after I had gone to other fields. To one who has not traversed these vast8 regions thus hurriedly alluded to, no brief outline can convey an idea of their magnitude, nor can such a person imagine the hardships connected with the work. But the cause grew and prospered, and each succeeding session of the Legislature showed marked progress among the people’s representatives, until at last the work was finished by the assembly of 1883; and the immortal act that enfranchised the women of the State that is to bear the name of Washington, and thus make her the “mother of her country,” reached its climax when Governor Newell<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-12-1884/#footnote_9_41" id="identifier_9_41" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).">9 signed the suffrage bill amid the mingling hallelujas of booming guns and ringing bells. In Oregon the work has kept more than even pace with Washington, though, by virtue of her State government, she has a longer road to travel, and we can only reach the goal of our ambition by a more circuitous route.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-12-1884/#footnote_10_41" id="identifier_10_41" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In Washington, suffrage could be, and was, adopted by a simple vote of both houses of the territorial legislature. Oregon law was more onerous, requiring that amendments to the state Constitution first be approved by two successive legislatures and then by a majority of voters (“Oregon State Senate“). The legislature having ratified a suffrage amendment in 1880 and 1882, the popular vote was pending in June.">10 The same long, laborious, patient canvass has been made here as there, and the same obstacles have been met and overcome in carrying on the work. Distributing my own labors abroad equally on both sides of the Columbia River, I have traveled each year many thousands of miles, and spoken in each geographical division an average of seventy times per year, during a period of twelve and a half years’ duration, making, at a low estimate, 1750 public speeches, or nearly11 five years’ steady work, counting 365 days to the year and making no discount for Sabbaths. I need not tell you of the able work of our worthy President, who has so graphically spoken for herself, except in corroboration of her utterances. We have had from the first no fund to back us, but have gone forth from post to post in pursuance of our duty, relying for support on the merits of our growing cause. Some months ago I conceived a plan for raising a fund for the coming campaign, which, though not yet ready for general publication, is satisfactorily explained to all who will aid it. And, although the plan is thus far flatteringly successful, it is comparatively in its infancy, and cannot reach fruition till after my return from Washington City, where I am to go at once to attend the sixteenth annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association, which meets March 4th, 5th and 6th at the federal capital.12 Immediately after my return (about April 1st), the campaign will begin in earnest. We must hold meetings in every precinct, and literally snow the country over with campaign documents.13 We are more than gratified at the success attendant upon our work thus far. Leading politicians of all parties are in perfect accord with our movement, and are working with and for us with the intent to win. The movement stands alone upon its own merit. The question with us is not one of expediency, but of right. We do not ask any man to give up his political or partisan bias, his religious or non-religious views, or his temperance or anti-temperance ideas. All we ask is that when he casts his vote next June he will vote “Yes” upon the Woman Suffrage Amendment, which says, simply, grandly and explicitly, “The right of suffrage shall not hereafter be prohibited in this State on account of sex.” Our neighbor women across the Columbia are watching us from their vantage ground with mingled feelings of hope for us and exultation among themselves. We believe that our fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are quite as chivalrous and progressive as their own; and we believe they will prove that our faith in them is well founded when the ballots are counted after election, and that we shall find ourselves invited to stand with them upon the broad platform of freedom, equality and justice, now jointly occupied by themselves, and the men and women of Washington Territory. NOTES Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175). By votes of 14-7 in the house and 7-5 in the council. According to historian T. A. Larson’s demographic analysis of the legislators, victory was not explained by marital status, place of birth, political party affiliation, age, years of residence in the territory, or religion, but by occupation: Farmers supported the bill eleven to two while twenty nonfarmers were evenly divided (“Washington” 52-53). Larson, “Washington” 53. (1825-1919): physician whose practice focused on women’s medicine, particularly childbirth; born New York City; married Reuben Thompson (?-1885), LaSalle, Illinois, 1847; studied medicine with Drs. Bry and Larkin in LaSalle in time before most medical schools accepted women; said to have been first woman practitioner in Illinois and Iowa; Portland’s first woman physician, 1867, where she practiced for twenty years; provided for six children and (like Scott Duniway) incapacitated husband; charter member, O.S.W.S.A., and prohibitionist who believed in women’s natural moral superiority, sparring constantly with Scott Duniway over movement goals; “one of the most influential women” in Portland history (Corning 243; Larsell 414; Moynihan, Rebel 147, 149, 187; Woman’s Tribune 29 Feb. 1908). New Northwest 14 Feb. 1884; Oregonian 13 Feb. 1884, 14 Feb. 1884. Oregonian: “upwards” Oregonian: “and in” Oregonian: “void” William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282). In Washington, suffrage could be, and was, adopted by a simple vote of both houses of the territorial legislature. Oregon law was more onerous, requiring that amendments to the state Constitution first be approved by two successive legislatures and then by a majority of voters (“Oregon State Senate“). The legislature having ratified a suffrage amendment in 1880 and 1882, the popular vote was pending in June. Oregonian: “more than” Her address before the N.W.S.A. convention follows immediately in this archive, and incorporates nearly all of this O.S.W.S.A. speech. On the heels of defeat, the New Northwest (5 June 1884; discussed in “U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage“) would publish a retrospective of her fund-raising and the campaign.
In August, 1883, Scott Duniway was in Astoria, campaigning for the suffrage amendment that was to be voted upon in June, 1884, which, she asserted predictably, the “wide-awake, whole-souled and public-spirited” residents favored “with all their hearts.” Abigail wrote an enthusiastic account of the rally. She credited the potent “printer’s ink” of the “gentlemanly editor” […]
In August, 1883, Scott Duniway was in Astoria, campaigning for the suffrage amendment that was to be voted upon in June, 1884, which, she asserted predictably, the “wide-awake, whole-souled and public-spirited” residents favored “with all their hearts.” Abigail wrote an enthusiastic account of the rally. She credited the potent “printer’s ink” of the “gentlemanly editor” of the Daily Astorian1 with arousing the public, so that the church in which the rally was held, on a Thursday evening, was “crowded to overflowing–crowded till the entrance is blocked and no late comer can get standing room.”2 The rally began with a violin solo by Freeman Parker<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_3_39" id="identifier_3_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Gelo Freeman Parker (1854-?): born in Petaluma, California, where he received a common-school education; worked the family farm until moving to Astoria at 20, where he worked as a mercantile clerk for six years; at the time of this address, surveyor of the city and Clatsop County. Improbably, his father, Freeman Parker (1822-1914): born in Washington, Vermont; became a school teacher, surveyor, and farmer; emigrated to California via Panama during the gold rush, 1849; settled in Petaluma (Gaston, Centennial 3: 466; cf. “Cypress Hill Memorial Park, Petaluma, Sonoma County, CA“). I have not attempted to determine whether the elder Parker, 61 at the time, might or could have been visiting his son or, for that matter, whether he played the violin.">3, “a grand medley of national harmonies, in which the patriotic strains of ‘Hail Columbia’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’ predominate.” So infectious was the music that “[t]he people cannot keep their feet still, and our own Presbyterian toes feel light.”<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_4_39" id="identifier_4_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church but, insofar as organized religion held any attraction for her in adulthood, she inclined toward Unitarianism (see About Scott Duniway n. 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 7; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night“).">4 Then, following another medley by “a well-trained choir of local musicians,” Scott Duniway addressed the crowd, emphasizing in particular–as she often did-the economic hardships imposed on women by a “one-sexed” government. The text of her address “as nearly as we can recollect,” her report of the occasion, and commentary about the City of Astoria, appear in the New Northwest, August 16, 1883. You will remember, friends, that when I last stood before you I explained our work in the Oregon Legislature from 1872 to 1880. I related how, step by step, the grand good men of Oregon had acceded to our demands until our statutory rights and responsibilities with themselves had all been conceded, and I said that the Legislature of 1882 would ratify the action of the Legislature of 1880, which had passed a resolution for so amending our State Constitution that the women of Oregon might become possessors of their rightful heritage–the elective franchise. I am here tonight to rejoice with you over the fulfillment of that prediction. The opposition to Woman Suffrage has all died out among thinking men. They have learned that women do not base their plea for equal rights upon any real or imaginary antagonism between the sexes. They have learned that this movement is going forward in their interest quite as much as in the interest of women. They know that all good women appreciate and honor everything that is good and noble in men. And women know that men have rescued the earth from its pristine wildness. Men have felled the forests, fenced the lands, builded the railways and bridges, erected homes, school-houses and churches, and made the world a comfortable place for women to live in. The roofs over our heads are the products of their handiwork. They have not proved themselves our enemies, but our friends. And if any man present would say that women are not the friends of men–the best, indeed, that man can have–I would pause to ask if the memory of his own mother does not dissipate at once all thought of such a theory. Remember, sir, that what your mother was to you all men’s mothers are to them. I am here tonight to speak to you of the best friends men have–their own dear, faithful wives and mothers. I am here to do what I can to awaken you to the justice of our demand that these best friends of men shall be allowed equal rights with the sons of women before the law. The weeds of tyranny and selfishness must be no longer left to grow unchecked. The abrasion of conflicting interests is a necessary factor in solving the great problem of human rights. Once, years ago, when I was in San Francisco, during one of my semi-annual visits to the metropolis while I was engaged in trade, after a busy day in the wholesale stores, I returned to my hotel, and, retiring, fell into a sleep from which I was soon awakened by the sound of a man’s and woman’s voices in an adjoining room, between which and my own there was a transom open. “Go to sleep!” exclaimed a gruff voice, “and stop your slack!” “How can I sleep,” replied a feminine echo, “when I know I’ll have to go home to-morrow without the necessaries of life for myself or children? The girls expect new shoes and dress, and they’ve worked so hard all Summer, and now you’ve brought our butter and eggs to town and drank and gambled everything away; and I’ve got to go back to the poor children without even a paper of needles or pins or a spool of thread to use.” “Go to sleep!” was the emphatic response, followed by a wicked oath about a “woman’s tongue.” The man fell to snoring, and I could hear his wife weeping till a late, late hour. While listening to the woman’s sobs, I thought of the rank weeds of tyranny and selfishness that had grown unchecked in that man’s heart till they had choked out all the wheat; and I reflected long upon the fact that there was in all America no Canada for that fugitive woman to flee to with her little ones, no redress except through the horrible inquisition of the divorce court. And I reflected that if that man had not been that woman’s husband, she, instead of weeping in unavailing agony over the robbery of her own and children’s earnings, could and would have had him arrested for misappropriating the proceeds of her toil. Then I thought of the system of one-sided power that made these things possible in the home, where above all other places under the sun there should be equal and exact justice. Thus by degrees did the Infinite Father open my eyes to facts that otherwise would have escaped my notice. Gradually, through the evolution of thought, the startling truths of the Declaration of Independence came home to my awakened understanding, till I saw through and through the great network of government; saw through it to the ballot-box, where the sovereignty of the individual first finds expression. I know that it is only in individual cases that the weeds of tyranny and selfishness have choked out every semblance of justice in the human home; and I also know that in a rightly ordered condition these weeds would not be permitted to grow unchecked anywhere. It seems to me that the time for argument has passed. This movement has progressed until all the liberty-loving men of Oregon have seen the justice of our plea, and they are coming to the rescue in battalions now. They see that a government, however correct it may be in theory, which is administered upon the one-sexed plan, necessarily falls short of its highest possibilities. A one-sexed government is like a one-sexed home. It is a bachelor’s hall on a big scale. And while it is true that men’s hearts are right toward women, it is equally true that we cannot hope for a just government, where one-half of the people–the home-making element–are denied a voice in making the laws which vitally concern them, and the power to cleanse and purify the moral atmosphere immediately surrounding their homes. If you tell me that bad women will control the government, I must reply that they control it now, and that is what we complain of. The woman whose husband gambled away her earnings was not a bad woman, or she would have taken advantage of the immoral conditions that men allow, and would have secured, in spite of law, temporal rights by a sacrifice of honor, instead of taking refuge behind unavailing tears. Men have never been successful in remanding bad women to back seats–unless good women were around. This is to be the work of good women; and woman will never reach her highest and best position till she has learned to take interest not only in her own home, where everything that ennobles life must originate, but also in the moral and political atmosphere that surrounds her home. The mother who has instilled good precepts in the mind of her son at home too often sees her work of years overturned in one evil hour by the bad associations outside of home. Gradually with woman’s freedom will come the power to right these wrongs. But I am not going to make a speech. Hon. C. W. Fulton<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_5_39" id="identifier_5_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles William Fulton (1853-1918): state and U.S. Senator; Republican; born Lima, Ohio; studied law and admitted to Nebraska bar, April, 1875; left for Oregon three days later; taught school at Waterloo (Linn County) until July, when entered law practice in Astoria; elected to state senate, 1878, 1880, 1891, 1893, 1898, 1899, 1901; presiding officer for three sessions; elected by state senate to U.S. Senate, 1903-09; prosecutions of the Mitchell faction for land fraud resulted in defeat in 1908 primaries (Corning 94; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 90-91; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 346-47).">5, who has promised to speak later in the evening, is now busy at court; but I want to say before he comes that to him belongs the credit of championing the pending amendment in the State Senate of 1880. And while he is engaged elsewhere, I am happy to state that another gentleman who is present will occupy the platform–Hon. B. F. Dennison<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_6_39" id="identifier_6_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Benjamin F. Dennison: appointed by legislature to board of regents, University of Washington, 1866-67, and elected president; appointed by governor to three-person commission charged with revising and codifying territorial law, c. 1868; appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant chief justice of territorial supreme court, 1869-71; delegate, territorial constitutional convention, 1878 (which Scott Duniway also attended and addressed), which guaranteed right of women to pursue “any lawful business, avocation, or profession” but failed to remove gender as qualification for voting (Bancroft, History of Washington 216, 273, 279, 290-91).">6, ex-Chief Justice of Washington Territory. When Oregon and Washington were geographically one, Hon. Samuel R. Thurston<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_7_39" id="identifier_7_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242).">7, an Oregon Representative in Congress, set the great question of equal rights in motion by securing the passage of the Donation Land Law.<a href="https://asduniway.org/astoria-oregon-august-9-1883/#footnote_8_39" id="identifier_8_39" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">8 Oregon and Washington are yet one in interest. They cannot be otherwise, since they are joined together by the pulsing arteries of our mighty Columbia River. The enfranchisement of Washington’s women will doubtless be accomplished by her next Legislature–while she is yet a Territory.9 Oregon, being a State, must leave the final solution of this great problem to what is called the popular vote. The gentleman from Washington already alluded to will now speak for himself. I have the honor to introduce Judge Dennison. NOTES John F. Halloran, who in 1880 had purchased the paper, launched in 1876, from its founder, DeWitt Clinton Ireland (E. Miller 87-88). Thus, the date of this address is inferred from the fact that August 9 was the Thursday immediately preceding her published account. Gelo Freeman Parker (1854-?): born in Petaluma, California, where he received a common-school education; worked the family farm until moving to Astoria at 20, where he worked as a mercantile clerk for six years; at the time of this address, surveyor of the city and Clatsop County. Improbably, his father, Freeman Parker (1822-1914): born in Washington, Vermont; became a school teacher, surveyor, and farmer; emigrated to California via Panama during the gold rush, 1849; settled in Petaluma (Gaston, Centennial 3: 466; cf. “Cypress Hill Memorial Park, Petaluma, Sonoma County, CA“). I have not attempted to determine whether the elder Parker, 61 at the time, might or could have been visiting his son or, for that matter, whether he played the violin. Abigail was raised in the Cumberland Presbyterian church but, insofar as organized religion held any attraction for her in adulthood, she inclined toward Unitarianism (see About Scott Duniway n. 92; “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex” n. 7; “Ballots and Bullets” n. 1; “The Visit of Nicodemus to Jesus by Night“). Charles William Fulton (1853-1918): state and U.S. Senator; Republican; born Lima, Ohio; studied law and admitted to Nebraska bar, April, 1875; left for Oregon three days later; taught school at Waterloo (Linn County) until July, when entered law practice in Astoria; elected to state senate, 1878, 1880, 1891, 1893, 1898, 1899, 1901; presiding officer for three sessions; elected by state senate to U.S. Senate, 1903-09; prosecutions of the Mitchell faction for land fraud resulted in defeat in 1908 primaries (Corning 94; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 90-91; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 346-47). Benjamin F. Dennison: appointed by legislature to board of regents, University of Washington, 1866-67, and elected president; appointed by governor to three-person commission charged with revising and codifying territorial law, c. 1868; appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant chief justice of territorial supreme court, 1869-71; delegate, territorial constitutional convention, 1878 (which Scott Duniway also attended and addressed), which guaranteed right of women to pursue “any lawful business, avocation, or profession” but failed to remove gender as qualification for voting (Bancroft, History of Washington 216, 273, 279, 290-91). Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242). An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). This prediction would prove correct (“Oregon State Woman Suffrage Association (1884)“).
OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 13, 1883
Scott Duniway continued as Vice President At Large of O.S.W.S.A. the next year and read the following annual report during the afternoon session of the eleventh annual convention’s first day, meeting in Y.M.C.A. Hall. Obviously feeling unappreciated, she complains–in ways both subtle and not–that she continues to bear the heavy financial burden of her office […]
Scott Duniway continued as Vice President At Large of O.S.W.S.A. the next year and read the following annual report during the afternoon session of the eleventh annual convention’s first day, meeting in Y.M.C.A. Hall. Obviously feeling unappreciated, she complains–in ways both subtle and not–that she continues to bear the heavy financial burden of her office herself, and calls for establishment of a campaign fund. Once again, the text is taken from minutes published in the New Northwest, February 15, 1883.1 Other copies may be found in Mss. 432B, vol. 16, pp. 33, 35, Oregon Historical Society, and in Scrapbook #2, p. 44, Abigail Scott Duniway Papers. The Daily Oregonian also published the minutes on February 14-16, including this address on the 14th. Minor variations other than capitalization and punctuation are footnoted. In November, 1881, I visited the Washington Territory Legislature, and addressed the honorable body in a joint convention assembled for the purpose of hearing an equal rights argument, in company of a large attendance of spectators, including the Governor<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_2_37" id="identifier_2_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282).">2, the Territorial Secretary<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_3_37" id="identifier_3_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Nicholas H. Owings (1836-1903): born Indianapolis, Indiana; educated Old Seminary; graduated law school, Northwestern Christian University; practiced law, Indianapolis; enlisted in Clay Guards to protect White House at outbreak of Civil War; served on staffs of Generals Grant and Sherman during war, resigning as lieutenant colonel, 1865; special agent, then assistant superintendent, U.S. postal department; Washington territorial secretary, 1877-89; instrumental in preventing anti-Chinese riots in Olympia, February, 1886; Republican state senator from Thurston County, 1889-92; died of apoplexy on 26th anniversary of appointment as secretary (“N. H. Owings”; Morning Olympian 6 Feb. 1903, 7 Feb. 1903, 8 Feb. 1903; Snowden 4: 343-44).">3, the United States Marshal<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_4_37" id="identifier_4_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles Hopkins (1819-1899): born Genoa, New York; lived in Far East as youth; studied law under Henry Welles of New York state supreme court; merchant, Naples, New York; moved to San Francisco, 1849, opening mercantile; following fire, moved to Petaluma, California, opening another mercantile and admitted to bar; following another fire, returned to San Francisco, expanding business to include lumbering in Milwaukie, Oregon; married Lucy S. Baker, daughter of Col. E. D. Baker; quartermaster at Vancouver during Civil War; after war, entered hardware business, Portland; Washington territorial U.S. Marshal, 1875-84; settled in Seattle, 1889; in retirement, became accomplished scholar of languages and Shakespeare; died following painful two-year illness (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 15 Mar. 1899, 16 Mar. 1899, 17 Mar. 1899).">4, and their families, and many other prominent individuals, all of whom accorded the appeal the most profound attention. To the surprise of almost everybody, and amid the general rejoicing of the better elements of Olympian society, the House of Representatives passed the Woman Suffrage bill at its very next session by a majority of two, when that branch of the Assembly adjourned for the remainder of the day. The wildest excitement prevailed, and the topic of equal rights formed the theme of conversation in all circles. The Council very soon reached the bill in the5 regular order, and, to the surprise of those who had not expected the House to vote affirmatively upon the question, the higher body, to which the women had looked confidently for assistance, refused to concur by a majority of two, thus leaving the question to a tie vote on joint ballot, and, of course, the bill was lost.6 I continued my labors in Olympia for a brief season, when, learning that it would be impossible to reach a reconsideration of the vote, I returned to Portland, and went on with my work in various parts of Oregon until September, 1882. This work consisted in part of my weekly labors connected7 with writing a serial story and furnishing regular editorial correspondence for the New Northwest, traveling about constantly and lecturing four times per week upon the average, canvassing for the paper, and forming local Woman Suffrage clubs wherever the outlook was favorable for the same. Since my last report was submitted, I have lectured on 296 different occasions, confining my work to Oregon principally, though I have spent in all four weeks in Washington Territory. I neglected this year to prepare and keep a tabulated statement of receipts and expenditures. I tried it for two months, and the balance on the wrong side of the ledger became so large that I feared to keep it up, lest the unpleasant reflection over statistics would so discourage me that I would not have the heart to carry the work to completion. I managed, however, by the sale of my books and by collections at lectures to meet the most of my traveling expenses without drawing upon the finances of the New Northwest, and have had no help outside of my own resources in carrying on the work, except a fund of $10.50 which remained in the treasury from the last convention, which sum was paid over to me by order of the Executive Committee to apply on traveling expenses in visiting the Washington Territory Legislature. The citizens of Yakima, W.T., also tendered me a benefit in November of last year, from which I realized $53, as proceeds of my farewell lecture in that enterprising city. The work in the Oregon legislature at its last session was especially satisfactory in results, the Legislature having, by its nearly unanimous action, acceded to our demands as far as the state constitution would permit.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_8_37" id="identifier_8_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1882, the Oregon legislature, by votes of 21-7 in the Senate and 47-9 in the House, reaffirmed its action of 1880 and resolved to submit a constitutional amendment approving woman suffrage to a vote of the people in 1884.">8 A grand ratification jubilee was held at the Opera House in Salem in honor of the9 members of the Legislature, at which spirited and excellent speeches were made by Senators Siglin<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_10_37" id="identifier_10_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="John M. Siglin (1840-?): born in Pennsylvania; educated in Illinois; admitted to bar, 1867; settled in Coos County, Oregon, 1872; founder and editor, Coos Bay News; elected to State Senate from Coos and Curry Counties, 1880; Democrat.">10 and Humphrey<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_11_37" id="identifier_11_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="N. B. Humphrey (1840-?): born and educated in Iowa; admitted to bar, 1861; came to Oregon in 1865 or 1866; two-term state Representative, beginning 1872; state Senator from Linn County, 1880-84; twice mayor of Albany; Republican (Hines 1091; cf. Hodgkin and Galvin 7).">11, Mrs. H. J. Hendershott<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_12_37" id="identifier_12_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harriet Jane Vincent Hendershott (1831-1917): born Georgetown, Ohio; daughter of Benjamin Vincent; in 1848, married James Hendershott (1829-1897), Democratic state representative (elected 1866) and senator (elected 1868) from Union County; instrumental in organizing 4th of July celebration, and in manufacturing a Stars and Stripes, in Union, 1864; died in Kerbyville at 86; buried with James at Cove, Union County (Hodgkin and Galvin 111-12; J. B. Horner, “Oregonians Raise Flag When Patriotism Required Courage,” Scrapbook #267: 196, OR Hist. Soc.; “New Information on Participants on ‘The McCully Train’“).">12, Col. C. A. Reed<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_13_37" id="identifier_13_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Cyrus Adams Reed (1825-1910): first state adjutant general, 1862; survived assassination attempt during Civil War; elected to state legislature, 1862, serving four terms, during which drafted military law of state (Corning 208; Clark, History 706, 710).">13 and Mr. W. S. Duniway<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_14_37" id="identifier_14_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Willis Scott Duniway (1856-1913): son of Abigail and Ben; born on donation land claim near Needy in Clackamas County; worked as printer for New Northwest and became managing editor in 1880; moved to stock range in Idaho, 1886; failed candidate for Republican nomination for State Printer, 1894; married Mary Alice MacCormac, Christmas Day, 1894, in Astoria; appointed private secretary to Governor William P. Lord, 1895 (Republican League 204; Duniway Family Genealogy; Moynihan, Rebel 224).">14. The expenses of that meeting, including hall rent, music and carriage hire, amounted to $32, of which I paid $25, Col. Reed $5, and Dr. C. H. Hall<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_15_37" id="identifier_15_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles Hershall Hall (1833-?): born Lexington, Kentucky; graduated DePauw University (Indiana), 1854; joined survey party for Central Pacific Railroad route, 1855; professor of natural science, Willamette University, 1856; married Mary Waller, daughter of Alvin F. Waller, 1857; completed medical degree, 1868; professor of medicine, Willamette University, and practicing physician, Salem, beginning 1871; surgeon, U.S. Indian Service, 1869-73; president, Oregon State Medical Society and editor, Oregon Medical Reporter, 1873-77 (Hines 734-35; Lang 836; cf. Who was Who 504).">15 $2, I meeting my share of disbursements by dress-making nights and mornings during the entire legislative session. I mention these facts that the public may see that sacrifices must be made by somebody if we would succeed in keeping this movement before the people. The outlook, among intelligent men, is favorable. If the vote upon this question could be left to brains only, there would be no doubt as to our ultimate success. But we know it is not brains alone16, but numbers, that win at the ballot-box; therefore we must be diligent in our efforts to secure the affirmative votes of numbers. I have nothing to recommend further than has already been suggested by our worthy President.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-13-1883/#footnote_17_37" id="identifier_17_37" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175).">17 We must have a campaign fund, and it is hoped that this convention will name committees to secure the necessary means to reach every voter in the State with arguments to stimulate pride, awaken patriotism, and arouse enthusiasm. We need the co-operation of intelligent, influential and wealthy men, and we earnestly urge them to “come over into Macedonia and help us.” Oregon’s grand opportunity has come. She can lead the van in this great march of liberty if her sons shall will it. We look to men for aid, and our experience in the past emboldens us to hope that we need not look to them in vain in the future. NOTES Minutes of the third and fourth days appeared the following week, February 22. William Augustus Newell (1817-1901): born Franklin, Ohio; graduated Rutger’s College, New Jersey; studied medicine at University of Pennsylvania, becoming accomplished surgeon; elected to Congress, 1846, 1848; elected Governor, New Jersey, 1856; returned to Congress, 1864; failed candidate for Governor, 1877; governor, Washington Territory (appointed by Rutherford B. Hayes), 1880-84; woman suffrage first adopted in territory during his term, 1883 (Honeyman; Bancroft, History of Washington 282). Nicholas H. Owings (1836-1903): born Indianapolis, Indiana; educated Old Seminary; graduated law school, Northwestern Christian University; practiced law, Indianapolis; enlisted in Clay Guards to protect White House at outbreak of Civil War; served on staffs of Generals Grant and Sherman during war, resigning as lieutenant colonel, 1865; special agent, then assistant superintendent, U.S. postal department; Washington territorial secretary, 1877-89; instrumental in preventing anti-Chinese riots in Olympia, February, 1886; Republican state senator from Thurston County, 1889-92; died of apoplexy on 26th anniversary of appointment as secretary (“N. H. Owings”; Morning Olympian 6 Feb. 1903, 7 Feb. 1903, 8 Feb. 1903; Snowden 4: 343-44). Charles Hopkins (1819-1899): born Genoa, New York; lived in Far East as youth; studied law under Henry Welles of New York state supreme court; merchant, Naples, New York; moved to San Francisco, 1849, opening mercantile; following fire, moved to Petaluma, California, opening another mercantile and admitted to bar; following another fire, returned to San Francisco, expanding business to include lumbering in Milwaukie, Oregon; married Lucy S. Baker, daughter of Col. E. D. Baker; quartermaster at Vancouver during Civil War; after war, entered hardware business, Portland; Washington territorial U.S. Marshal, 1875-84; settled in Seattle, 1889; in retirement, became accomplished scholar of languages and Shakespeare; died following painful two-year illness (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 15 Mar. 1899, 16 Mar. 1899, 17 Mar. 1899). Oregonian: “its” The bill carried in the house, 13-11, but failed in the council, 5-7 (Larson, “Washington” 52). Oregonian: “commenced” In 1882, the Oregon legislature, by votes of 21-7 in the Senate and 47-9 in the House, reaffirmed its action of 1880 and resolved to submit a constitutional amendment approving woman suffrage to a vote of the people in 1884. Oregonian omits “the” John M. Siglin (1840-?): born in Pennsylvania; educated in Illinois; admitted to bar, 1867; settled in Coos County, Oregon, 1872; founder and editor, Coos Bay News; elected to State Senate from Coos and Curry Counties, 1880; Democrat. N. B. Humphrey (1840-?): born and educated in Iowa; admitted to bar, 1861; came to Oregon in 1865 or 1866; two-term state Representative, beginning 1872; state Senator from Linn County, 1880-84; twice mayor of Albany; Republican (Hines 1091; cf. Hodgkin and Galvin 7). Harriet Jane Vincent Hendershott (1831-1917): born Georgetown, Ohio; daughter of Benjamin Vincent; in 1848, married James Hendershott (1829-1897), Democratic state representative (elected 1866) and senator (elected 1868) from Union County; instrumental in organizing 4th of July celebration, and in manufacturing a Stars and Stripes, in Union, 1864; died in Kerbyville at 86; buried with James at Cove, Union County (Hodgkin and Galvin 111-12; J. B. Horner, “Oregonians Raise Flag When Patriotism Required Courage,” Scrapbook #267: 196, OR Hist. Soc.; “New Information on Participants on ‘The McCully Train’“). Cyrus Adams Reed (1825-1910): first state adjutant general, 1862; survived assassination attempt during Civil War; elected to state legislature, 1862, serving four terms, during which drafted military law of state (Corning 208; Clark, History 706, 710). Willis Scott Duniway (1856-1913): son of Abigail and Ben; born on donation land claim near Needy in Clackamas County; worked as printer for New Northwest and became managing editor in 1880; moved to stock range in Idaho, 1886; failed candidate for Republican nomination for State Printer, 1894; married Mary Alice MacCormac, Christmas Day, 1894, in Astoria; appointed private secretary to Governor William P. Lord, 1895 (Republican League 204; Duniway Family Genealogy; Moynihan, Rebel 224). Charles Hershall Hall (1833-?): born Lexington, Kentucky; graduated DePauw University (Indiana), 1854; joined survey party for Central Pacific Railroad route, 1855; professor of natural science, Willamette University, 1856; married Mary Waller, daughter of Alvin F. Waller, 1857; completed medical degree, 1868; professor of medicine, Willamette University, and practicing physician, Salem, beginning 1871; surgeon, U.S. Indian Service, 1869-73; president, Oregon State Medical Society and editor, Oregon Medical Reporter, 1873-77 (Hines 734-35; Lang 836; cf. Who was Who 504). Oregonian omits “alone” Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175).
OREGON PIONEER ASSOCIATION – June 15, 1882
Having migrated to Oregon in 1852 at the age of 17, the people and events of the pioneer period held a special place in Scott Duniway’s heart. She was a member of the Oregon Pioneer Association, founded on October 18, 1873, and a frequent speaker at its annual reunions at the state fairgrounds near Salem.1 […]
Having migrated to Oregon in 1852 at the age of 17, the people and events of the pioneer period held a special place in Scott Duniway’s heart. She was a member of the Oregon Pioneer Association, founded on October 18, 1873, and a frequent speaker at its annual reunions at the state fairgrounds near Salem.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_1_35" id="identifier_1_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="New Northwest 30 Apr. 1875. The Association’s Transactions first record a Scott Duniway talk in 1877; she appears frequently, as speaker and spoken-of, for the remainder of her life. In 1916, William M. Colvig memorialized her as one of “the mental giants of early Oregon” (Transactions of the Forty-Fourth 346).">1 In mid-June, 1882, she attended the association’s tenth reunion, where, she later recalled, “a goodly crowd was soon assembled to march, with depleted ranks, under the banners of the long ago, to the plaintive strains of the old song, ‘When You and I Were Young,’ appropriately arranged for band music.”2 Scott Duniway was not scheduled to address the crowd this day. However, when the principal speaker for the afternoon fell ill, Scott Duniway read his manuscript for him, “thereby demonstrating,” she noted shrewdly, “the hitherto supposed impossibility that a woman may represent a man.” Following, she was given thirty minutes for original remarks and “vigorously embraced the opportunity for advocating equal rights.” These remarks exemplify the mixture of epideictic and deliberative elements that came to typify Scott Duniway’s persuasive efforts: She argues for a pragmatic, deliberative end–equal suffrage–but largely through transcendent appeals to principle and place that unify, and only secondarily through practical, expedient appeals that divide. So, she claims that Oregon is a special place where liberty and freedom naturally must grow and prosper. She appeals to the pioneer spirit of its inhabitants, suggesting that the hardships of the pioneer experience both have earned women equal rights and enable men to recognize the legitimacy of women’s claims. She contends that equal rights will promote harmonious relations between the sexes, arguing that men do not respect women who do not respect themselves. Only fourth does she appeal to class interests, suggesting that equal rights will strengthen the “moral” and “law-abiding” elements of society at the expense of the “vicious” and “ignorant” classes. The occasion of a pioneer reunion is itself a celebratory one, so the primacy of epideictic is especially fitting here. Indeed, as Abigail herself had observed years before, the Oregon Pioneer Association, open to all persons-–male and female–-living within the original Oregon Territory who had settled there prior to January, 1853, itself embodies her rationale for equal suffrage.3 But this celebration also was unfolding during an important political moment. The legislature soon would consider for a second time the resolution to amend the state constitution and provide for equal suffrage, which was required before the matter could be submitted to a popular vote.4 Keenly aware of the stakes, Abigail “vigorously embraced the opportunity for advocating equal rights,” crafting a primarily epideictic message incorporating deliberative elements. She often struck the same balance of strategies even on occasions–such as those before legislatures–that called for deliberation more than celebration.5 The text is taken from the Transactions of the Association’s tenth annual reunion.6 Mr. President<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_7_35" id="identifier_7_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Medorem Crawford (1819-1891): born Orange County, New York; came to Oregon with Dr. Elijah White’s party, 1842; married Adalene Brown, 1843; attended Champoeg meeting in which Willamette Valley settlers formed provisional government, 1843; member, provisional legislature representing Clackamas County, 1847-49; farmer near Dayton, 1852; state house of representatives from Yamhill, 1860; commander of Oregon Escort, militia accompanying emigrant wagon train, 1861; appointed Army captain and commanded other wagon trains, 1862-63; Oregon collector of internal revenue, 1864-69, and appraiser of customs, 1871-75; retired to Dayton farm, 1875 (Corning 66; Who was Who 275; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1, 300-01).">7: I have here a copy of the “Transactions of the Ninth Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association,” published last year, in which I find the following testimonial from the pen of Hon. Jesse Applegate<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_8_35" id="identifier_8_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1811-1888): covered wagon pioneer, surveyor, legislator, publicist; born Henry County, Kentucky; deputy surveyor, St. Louis, Missouri; captain of “cow column” in “Great Migration,” 1843; instrumental in opening Southern Route into Oregon, 1846; influential in revising Provisional government, 1845, in shaping Oregon as Territory, 1849, and as member of State Constitutional convention, 1857; Whig, then Republican; moved from Willamette Valley to farm in Umpqua Valley, 1849; assembling good library, became known as writer on public issues and as “Sage of Yoncalla” (Corning 9-10; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 233).">8 to the memory of his faithful wife9, who came with him to Oregon among the first of the pioneer women who crossed the plains in wagons, and who died in April, 1881. Mr. Applegate says: “She was a safe counsellor, for her untaught instincts were truer and safer rules of conduct than my better informed judgment. Had I oftener followed her advice, her pilgr[i]mage on earth might have been longer and happier; at least, her strong desire to make all happy around her, would not have been cramped by extreme penury.” Mr. President, we see before us the serried ranks of women who survive Cynthia Applegate, who, like her, have bravely fought the pioneer battle of life; who, unlike her and many others, as noble and self sacrificing as she and they, yet live to bear their part of life’s burdens–some of whom survive their lamented husbands and are left to “Walk the road of life alone.” I was glad, when in concluding his able and elaborate address, the distinguished ex-Senator who preceded me<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_10_35" id="identifier_10_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Francis A. Chenoweth (1819-1899): judge, attorney, politician; born in Franklin County, Ohio; admitted to Wisconsin bar at 22; came to Oregon, 1849; settled at Lower Cascades, Washington side, 1850; Oregon territorial legislature, 1852-53; advocated separation of Washington as a territory, becoming speaker, first Washington territorial legislature, 1854, and associate justice, territorial supreme court, 1854-58; returned to Oregon, 1863; speaker of Oregon House, representing Benton County, 1866; district attorney of the 2nd judicial district, 1872; died King’s Valley (Corning 52; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 271).">10 made favorable mention of the progress already made in Oregon, in relation to the recognition of the equal rights of women, and I deem it most appropriate to supplement his timely words of encouragement with a woman’s feeble words of exhortation. Think, gentlemen, of the many pioneer women of Oregon, who like Mrs. Applegate, have gone down to their graves in deep penury, “whose untaught instincts were truer and safer rules of conduct than the better informed judgments of men.” It was a tardy recognition of a noble woman’s worth that brought forth the deep wail of regret that I have quoted. But no tongue or pen can depict the hopeless anguish that wrung the heart of the bereaved husband who frankly confessed, in his hour of desolation, that “her life might have been longer and happier” if she had always been equally free and independent with him. There was, there is, no kindlier, manlier man than Jesse Applegate; and if, with his great soul and manly goodness of heart, he has been so unjust to the best and dearest friend God ever gives to man, what shall we say of the lives of many–alas, how many–other women, with husbands less noble than he, whose toil has brought them no recompense, very little appreciation and far less liberty? The distinguished gentleman who preceded me, alluded briefly to the memory of Samuel R. Thurston<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_11_35" id="identifier_11_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242).">11, Oregon Territory’s first Representative in Congress, who succeeded in securing the passage of the Donation Land Act in the year 1850, thereby placing this commonwealth on record as the very first in all our proud confederacy to recognize the inalienable right of woman to ownership in fee simple of other lands than those that might or might not have been bequeathed to her before marriage by gift, devise or inheritance.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_12_35" id="identifier_12_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30).">12 The Oregon pioneers were a noble race of freemen. The spirit of enterprise that impelled them to seek these shores was a bold and free spirit; and the patient heroism of the women who accompanied them was an example as inspiring as salutary. There are lessons of liberty in the rock-ribbed mountains that pierce our blue horizon with their snow-crowned heads and laugh to scorn the warring elements of the earth and air; lessons of freedom in the broad prairies that roll away into illimitable distances; in the gigantic forests that rear their hydra heads to the very zenith and touch the horizon with extended arms; lessons of truth, equality and justice in the very air we breathe, and lessons of irresistible progress in the mighty waters that surge with irresistible power through the overshadowing bluffs where rolls the Oregon.13 It is not strange that noble men living in such a country should have early learned to preach and practice the grand gospel of equal rights. And when the full history of the Oregon pioneers shall take its proper place among proud annals of the nation, the fact that equal property rights for women were among the very first of its recorded statutes while it was yet a Territory, will be recognized in its true significance. Men of Oregon, the fact that you have taken the lead in the past in recognizing woman’s equal claim with yourselves to a share in the landed domain of the commonwealth, coupled with the significant truth that you have already granted your wives and mothers partial political recognition through legislative assemblies, emboldens us to hope, and encourages us to believe that you will go yet further; that you will not stop short of the final recognition of our free and equal right with yourselves to a full voice in the government which we are taxed to maintain and to whose laws we are held amenable. We know the incoming Legislature will proudly ratify our proposed amendment to the State Constitution. Thoughtful, intelligent men everywhere admit that our cause is just; and no man with brains enough to vote at all will deny that women will be enfranchised. But we do not forget that, after the Legislature has for the second time spoken–after the picked men of all parties have carried our work as far as they can constitutionally go, it will then be submitted, not to the people–would to God it might be–but to one-half of the people, to the voters of Oregon, by whose fiat the wives and the mothers of the men of Oregon must stand or fall. We are not afraid of the votes of wise men, moral men, intelligent, liberty-loving, progressive men; but we know, alas! that every ignorant, vicious, drunken, law-breaking or tyrannical man has a vote which counts at the polls as surely as the vote of a thinker, statesman and philanthropist. Women cannot reach the prejudiced, ignorant and vicious voting elements to educate and enlighten them. Such men consider themselves superior to those Oregon pioneers–these wives and mothers of orderly and law-abiding citizens–and we must look to the leading men of the State, like those around me, for protection from the proscriptive ballots of the lawless, ignorant and wicked hordes who presume to dictate our destiny. Gentlemen, did you ever know a wife-beater who was a woman suffragist? Did you ever see a man who is inferior to his wife in intellect who believed that wife ought to vote? Every besotted and degraded man, every ignoramus who will sell his vote for a drink of whiskey or a two-and-a-half piece; every tramp and every fugitive from justice will vote against woman suffrage every time. But the women of Oregon have faith in the enlightened manhood of this proud young State. We believe you all echo the sentiments expressed by my friend, Senator Kelly<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-pioneer-association-june-15-1882/#footnote_14_35" id="identifier_14_35" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Kerr Kelly (1819-1903): lawyer, jurist; born Center County, Pennsylvania; educated at Dickinson Academy, Pennsylvania, and Princeton College; admitted to Pennsylvania bar, 1842; deputy attorney general, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, 1847-49; removed to California, 1849, then to Oregon, 1851; began law practice in Oregon City, 1851; code commissioner, 1853; territorial council, 1853-57; delegate, state constitutional convention, 1857; state senator, 1860-64; married Mary Buchanan Millar, 1863; U.S. Senator, 1871-77; Oregon Chief Justice, 1879-81; practiced law in Portland, 1880-90; retired to Washington, D.C.; Democrat (Who was Who 664).">14, and that you will make the movement for woman’s full and free enfranchisement so popular that it will be able to stem the current of opposition, and thus place Oregon in the lead in the great galaxy of States that will gladly follow her grand example. A word now to the ladies present. I am told that a few of you may yet be found who say you have “all the rights you want.” I know what you say that for. You don’t believe it; but you foolishly fancy that men will applaud you for it. I don’t blame you for liking men, and honorably coveting their good opinion. I like men myself–much better than I like women. But, let me tell you that while it may tickle their vanity–and they are just a trifle vain–to hear you make such silly speeches, they will say of you, when your backs are turned, “What a pity Miss or Mrs. So-and-so is not as intelligent as Mrs. Such-and-such, who wants to vote!” Let me tell you further, ladies, that every one of you who strives to hinder your own enfranchisement by such ridiculous insincerity of speech, will attempt to be among the very first at the ballot-box as soon as the gates that lead to the temple of liberty are opened wide for you by the grand good men who pity, even if they praise, your lack of patriotism. I have seen this experiment tried. I saw how it worked at our last school election in Portland15, when many scores of ladies voted eagerly and gladly, not one in ten of whom had ever thanked–and most of them had censured–your humble speaker for knocking that the gates might be opened unto them. Ladies, if there be those among you who have made that silly declaration sometimes, you won’t make it again, will you? In conclusion, men of Oregon, who have so patiently heeded my earnest utterance, let me exhort you to be vigilant in our cause. We trust you, we confide in you, we depend upon you to grant us the great boon of political representation under the laws of a country at whose tribunals we are tried, to whose governmental expenses we pay tribute. Surely you are not afraid to trust the mothers, wives and daughters of the pioneers with the same boon of liberty that you so highly prize for yourselves? Would a wife like Cynthia Applegate abuse the ballot? Have we not always been your best friends? Grant us equal rights with you before the law, good men and brethren, and we will do you good and not evil, all the days of our lives. Thanking you, Mr. President, for the honor conferred upon the pioneer women of Oregon, in thus permitting our plea to be heard, I bow and subside, possessed of an abiding faith in the near approach of the good time coming, when the women of Oregon will become, as they of right ought now to be, free and independent. NOTES New Northwest 30 Apr. 1875. The Association’s Transactions first record a Scott Duniway talk in 1877; she appears frequently, as speaker and spoken-of, for the remainder of her life. In 1916, William M. Colvig memorialized her as one of “the mental giants of early Oregon” (Transactions of the Forty-Fourth 346). New Northwest 22 June 1882. New Northwest 30 Apr. 1875. “Oregon State Senate.” For example, see her 1880 address to the Oregon State Senate. 36-39. Medorem Crawford (1819-1891): born Orange County, New York; came to Oregon with Dr. Elijah White’s party, 1842; married Adalene Brown, 1843; attended Champoeg meeting in which Willamette Valley settlers formed provisional government, 1843; member, provisional legislature representing Clackamas County, 1847-49; farmer near Dayton, 1852; state house of representatives from Yamhill, 1860; commander of Oregon Escort, militia accompanying emigrant wagon train, 1861; appointed Army captain and commanded other wagon trains, 1862-63; Oregon collector of internal revenue, 1864-69, and appraiser of customs, 1871-75; retired to Dayton farm, 1875 (Corning 66; Who was Who 275; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1, 300-01). (1811-1888): covered wagon pioneer, surveyor, legislator, publicist; born Henry County, Kentucky; deputy surveyor, St. Louis, Missouri; captain of “cow column” in “Great Migration,” 1843; instrumental in opening Southern Route into Oregon, 1846; influential in revising Provisional government, 1845, in shaping Oregon as Territory, 1849, and as member of State Constitutional convention, 1857; Whig, then Republican; moved from Willamette Valley to farm in Umpqua Valley, 1849; assembling good library, became known as writer on public issues and as “Sage of Yoncalla” (Corning 9-10; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 233). Cynthia Ann Parker Applegate (?-1881): native of Tennessee; married Jesse Applegate, 1831, settling first on farm in Osage Valley, Missouri; twelve children (Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 1415-16). Francis A. Chenoweth (1819-1899): judge, attorney, politician; born in Franklin County, Ohio; admitted to Wisconsin bar at 22; came to Oregon, 1849; settled at Lower Cascades, Washington side, 1850; Oregon territorial legislature, 1852-53; advocated separation of Washington as a territory, becoming speaker, first Washington territorial legislature, 1854, and associate justice, territorial supreme court, 1854-58; returned to Oregon, 1863; speaker of Oregon House, representing Benton County, 1866; district attorney of the 2nd judicial district, 1872; died King’s Valley (Corning 52; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 271). Samuel Royal Thurston (1816-1851): first Oregon delegate to Congress; born Monmouth, Maine; graduated Bowdoin College, 1843; admitted to Maine bar, 1844; went to Iowa, 1845; edited Burlington Gazette, 1845-47; came overland to Oregon, 1847, opening law office in Oregon City; Democrat; elected to Provisional legislature from Washington County, 1848; Territorial delegate to Congress, 1849-51; prime mover behind Oregon Donation Land Law (Corning 244; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 2: 242). An act of Congress disbursing public lands in the Oregon Territory to settlers; provided that U.S. citizens who had resided upon and cultivated the land for four consecutive years were granted 320 acres if single or 640 acres if married, half to be held by the wife; encouraged not only settlement but also many marriages, and greatly enhanced women’s property rights and economic security (Corning 75; History of the Bench 28-30). “Where Rolls the Oregon,” a phrase she uses often, is the title of a poem by Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller (164-65). James Kerr Kelly (1819-1903): lawyer, jurist; born Center County, Pennsylvania; educated at Dickinson Academy, Pennsylvania, and Princeton College; admitted to Pennsylvania bar, 1842; deputy attorney general, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, 1847-49; removed to California, 1849, then to Oregon, 1851; began law practice in Oregon City, 1851; code commissioner, 1853; territorial council, 1853-57; delegate, state constitutional convention, 1857; state senator, 1860-64; married Mary Buchanan Millar, 1863; U.S. Senator, 1871-77; Oregon Chief Justice, 1879-81; practiced law in Portland, 1880-90; retired to Washington, D.C.; Democrat (Who was Who 664). School suffrage was adopted during the 1878 legislative session. See Scott Duniway’s 1879 address to the seventh annual O.S.W.S.A. convention.
OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – October 18, 1881
At its ninth convention in February, 1881, O.S.W.S.A. had approved a new constitution that created an office of Vice President at Large, who “shall be authorized to lecture under the auspices of this association, in any town, city or district, he or she may visit, within the boundaries of the state, and shall be vigilant […]
At its ninth convention in February, 1881, O.S.W.S.A. had approved a new constitution that created an office of Vice President at Large, who “shall be authorized to lecture under the auspices of this association, in any town, city or district, he or she may visit, within the boundaries of the state, and shall be vigilant in prosecuting the work of the association. He or she shall, as far as possible, organize county woman suffrage societies and local woman suffrage clubs, and shall be entitled to such funds from the treasury as the executive committee shall deem appropriate compensation for the service rendered.”1 Abigail had chaired the committee responsible for revising the constitution, so it is not surprising that this new position not only captured her activities perfectly but, more importantly, promised that at least some of her expenses henceforth would be defrayed by the association, not borne out of pocket. One of Abigail’s constant sore spots was about to be salved: She would be compensated (albeit inadequately) for her work. And so, at the opening session of the tenth convention, held at Y.M.C.A. Hall in Portland, Scott Duniway gave the following report of her prodigious activities in the first of her many years as Vice President at Large. Sadly, attendance was “limited, owing no doubt to the rain, which poured down in torrents and continued nearly all the forenoon.” Except for periods when illness “indisposed” her<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-october-18-1881/#footnote_2_33" id="identifier_2_33" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Moynihan chronicles her battles with a variety of conditions from childhood through her later years (Rebel passim). In the New Northwest (22 June 1877), Scott Duniway apologized to readers for “periodic attacks” of illness “every week or two,” which she traced to “periodic overwork” as a child in Illinois, and then slyly claimed were aggravated by the “constant effort on our part in later years to sustain the finances of our mission.” The column closed with an appeal for subscriber dues.">2, the hard work of organizing on the frontier had Abigail traveling frequently. This report reveals her grueling pace and the difficult conditions she faced almost daily. The text comes from the minutes of the convention, published in the New Northwest, October 20, 1881.3 These minutes also report on other aspects of Scott Duniway’s participation in the five-day-long convention.4 The Daily Oregonian also published the convention minutes on October 19-22, including this address on the 19th; minor differences beyond capitalization and punctuation appear in footnotes. Mr. President, Gentlemen, and Ladies: As Vice-President-At-Large of this association, I have, since my election to the office, endeavored as best I could to perform the duties assigned me, of which I will now offer a brief synopsis. In January<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-october-18-1881/#footnote_5_33" id="identifier_5_33" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The fact that Abigail was not elected Vice President at Large until February 11 (Morning Oregonian 12 Feb. 1881) strongly suggests that she viewed this office and its “emoluments”–i.e., reimbursement from the treasury–only as a formality that was her due; in her own eyes, her work before and after election was seamless.">5, Mrs. J. DeVore Johnson<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-october-18-1881/#footnote_6_33" id="identifier_6_33" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Josephine DeVore Johnson (1845-?): born in Illinois; daughter of Rev. John F. DeVore, prominent Methodist minister in Oregon and Puget Sound conferences, member of the publishing committee of the Pacific Christian Advocate (a newspaper with which the New Northwest repeatedly clashed editorially), and trustee of Willamette University; emigrated to Oregon, 1853; graduate of Willamette University; “one of the most intelligent women in the State”; on Christmas Day, 1868, married William Carey Johnson, a printer (with the Oregon Spectator and Argus), attorney (Oregon City district attorney, 1858; city recorder, 1859; prosecutor for 4th Judicial District, 1862), and Republican politician (ran for legislature, 1857; state senator, 1866); mother of five; like Scott Duniway, active in Woman’s Auxiliary of Oregon Pioneer Association (Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.; Hines 550-51; Hodgkin and Galvin 75; Lang 638-39; Transactions of the Thirty-Fifth 11 [see also the Transactions for 1885, 1889, and 1908]; Republican League 229; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 301-03).">6 and myself accepted an invitation from the well-organized and influential Woman Suffrage Association of Yamhill county to attend a convention at McMinnville, in connection with our able and indefatigable co-worker, Mrs. H. A. Loughary<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-october-18-1881/#footnote_7_33" id="identifier_7_33" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175).">7. This convention was largely attended and productive of the happiest results. I then went to Lafayette and gave two lectures, and from thence, after a short season spent at home, to Corvallis, where I held several meetings and organized the Benton County Woman Suffrage Association. I next held a series of meetings in Polk county, and organized the County Woman Suffrage Association in Dallas, and an auxiliary club in Independence. On my way to Portland, I stopped over and gave lectures at Amity in Yamhill, and also at Hillsboro in Washington county. Thence I went to Wasco county, and gave a course of lectures in The Dalles and at8 Upper Cascades, and, returning, organized the Wasco County Woman Suffrage Association. My next public work was in Northern Idaho, where I went in June and held meetings in Lewiston, Mt. Idaho, Grangeville and Moscow. Then I went to Washington Territory and organized a Whitman County Association at Colfax and a Spokane County Association at Cheney. Besides lecturing at these county towns, I also held a series of public meetings in Palouse, Spokane Falls and Ainsworth. I returned to Portland in July, and after a brief respite from platform labor, repaired to Astoria, where I held meetings at upper and lower towns, and also at Ilwaco and Oysterville in Washington Territory, and stopped over at Knappa and gave two lectures on my return to Portland. In September, after a brief respite at home, I went to Southern Oregon and held public meetings in Jacksonville, Ashland and Phoenix; but the approaching Convention of the State Association and my own indisposition prevented any attempt at organization in Jackson county, though I found the people quite ready for it and the cause popular.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-october-18-1881/#footnote_9_33" id="identifier_9_33" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Perhaps this comment simply reflects Scott Duniway’s typical optimism. Or, perhaps, it reflects her equally typical sly wit. Just two years earlier, in the summer of 1879, she had visited Jacksonville, a Democratic stronghold in southern Oregon. In retaliation for rather rude treatment by some of its leading men, she caused to be printed in the New Northwest (July 10, 1879) some highly unflattering details about a local (Democratic) judge. This produced “a mighty tempest in the social and political teapot,” she reported the following week, with “[s]quads of men . . . holding indignation meetings on the street.” So indignant were they that Abigail was egged and hung in effigy. Never one to be bested, she taunted: “Only one egg hit us, and that was fresh and sweet, and it took us square on the scalp and saved a shampooing bill.” For ever after (for example, she recalled the incident before the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association in 1897), she scornfully called the egg-throwing “Jacksonville arguments” and cited the incident as proof of the “hoodlum element” that opposed woman’s rights (New Northwest 17 July 1879; Moynihan, Rebel 177-78).">9 Since last February I have traveled seven hundred miles by rail, eight hundred by steamer, and five hundred by stage and buckboard; made fifty-two Woman Suffrage addresses and10 a Fourth of July oration at Cheney, Washington Territory; addressed the Pioneer Society of Jackson county, Oregon; and organized five County Woman Suffrage Associations and one auxiliary county club. I have enjoyed the courtesy of press passes on most of the principal routes of travel and free entertainment in many private families, and also in the Parker House, Astoria. Besides, I have expended for hotel bills, hall rents, hack hire and incidentals inseparably connected with almost constant traveling the sum of $142.65 from my private funds above all contributions to the fifty-two lectures above named. This sum I have raised as I needed it from the sale of books and from subscriptions to the journal in which I am interested. The lectures have in every instance been largely attended by the leading citizens of each community. The most respectable and intelligent classes have joined the associations in all cases, the officers frequently being among the foremost judges, lawyers, clergymen, farmers, editors and school teachers in the county, who are ready to assist their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in their endeavor to secure equal rights for men and women. Occasionally I have met with very contemptible opposition from self-styled “protectors of women,” but their numbers are so few of late, and their attempts to retard the work so futile, that they only provoke a passing comment, after which they relapse into oblivion. Very rarely I find women who are opposed to their own enfranchisement; but they11 are always among those who take all the rights in the matrimonial catalogue, and their iron rule only extends over one voter in a household, so we have not much to fear from their meager numbers and contracted influence. The most gratifying progress I note is among the young people, and in the schools and colleges, where the cause has become immensely popular. NOTES Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881. Moynihan chronicles her battles with a variety of conditions from childhood through her later years (Rebel passim). In the New Northwest (22 June 1877), Scott Duniway apologized to readers for “periodic attacks” of illness “every week or two,” which she traced to “periodic overwork” as a child in Illinois, and then slyly claimed were aggravated by the “constant effort on our part in later years to sustain the finances of our mission.” The column closed with an appeal for subscriber dues. Another copy of these minutes, at the Oregon Historical Society, is wrongly hand-dated “1882” (Mss. 432B 16: 26). The minutes for the third through fifth days may be found in the following week’s New Northwest (27 Oct. 1881). The fact that Abigail was not elected Vice President at Large until February 11 (Morning Oregonian 12 Feb. 1881) strongly suggests that she viewed this office and its “emoluments”–i.e., reimbursement from the treasury–only as a formality that was her due; in her own eyes, her work before and after election was seamless. Josephine DeVore Johnson (1845-?): born in Illinois; daughter of Rev. John F. DeVore, prominent Methodist minister in Oregon and Puget Sound conferences, member of the publishing committee of the Pacific Christian Advocate (a newspaper with which the New Northwest repeatedly clashed editorially), and trustee of Willamette University; emigrated to Oregon, 1853; graduate of Willamette University; “one of the most intelligent women in the State”; on Christmas Day, 1868, married William Carey Johnson, a printer (with the Oregon Spectator and Argus), attorney (Oregon City district attorney, 1858; city recorder, 1859; prosecutor for 4th Judicial District, 1862), and Republican politician (ran for legislature, 1857; state senator, 1866); mother of five; like Scott Duniway, active in Woman’s Auxiliary of Oregon Pioneer Association (Pioneer File Index, OR Hist. Soc.; Hines 550-51; Hodgkin and Galvin 75; Lang 638-39; Transactions of the Thirty-Fifth 11 [see also the Transactions for 1885, 1889, and 1908]; Republican League 229; History of the Pacific Northwest 2: 301-03). Harriet A. Buxton Loughary (1827-1907): prominent Oregon suffragist; born Virginia; married William J. Loughary, teacher, in Burlington, Iowa, 1848; came overland, 1864, settling first in Polk County, then Salem, finally on farm south of Amity, Yamhill County; peripatetic lecturer and campaigner wrote columns for New Northwest, 1874-85; president, O.S.W.S.A. for many years; mother of nine, eight born in Iowa (two died in infancy; six made the overland journey) and one in Oregon; nurse-midwife; regarded a brilliant speaker, Scott Duniway called her “the Patrick Henry of the new dispensation”; died of stroke (K. Holmes 115-17; Moynihan, Rebel 175). Oregonian omits “at” Perhaps this comment simply reflects Scott Duniway’s typical optimism. Or, perhaps, it reflects her equally typical sly wit. Just two years earlier, in the summer of 1879, she had visited Jacksonville, a Democratic stronghold in southern Oregon. In retaliation for rather rude treatment by some of its leading men, she caused to be printed in the New Northwest (July 10, 1879) some highly unflattering details about a local (Democratic) judge. This produced “a mighty tempest in the social and political teapot,” she reported the following week, with “[s]quads of men . . . holding indignation meetings on the street.” So indignant were they that Abigail was egged and hung in effigy. Never one to be bested, she taunted: “Only one egg hit us, and that was fresh and sweet, and it took us square on the scalp and saved a shampooing bill.” For ever after (for example, she recalled the incident before the Oregon State Equal Suffrage Association in 1897), she scornfully called the egg-throwing “Jacksonville arguments” and cited the incident as proof of the “hoodlum element” that opposed woman’s rights (New Northwest 17 July 1879; Moynihan, Rebel 177-78). Oregonian: “addresses, gave” Oregonian: “this few”
Like clockwork, Scott Duniway had been presenting petitions for a suffrage law to every session of the Oregon legislature since 18721, ultimately, despite varying degrees of support, to no avail. However, in 1880 prohibitionist legislators introduced both prohibition and woman suffrage amendments to the state constitution, prompting “months of squabbling.”2 Abigail–seeking to decouple the two […]
Like clockwork, Scott Duniway had been presenting petitions for a suffrage law to every session of the Oregon legislature since 18721, ultimately, despite varying degrees of support, to no avail. However, in 1880 prohibitionist legislators introduced both prohibition and woman suffrage amendments to the state constitution, prompting “months of squabbling.”2 Abigail–seeking to decouple the two issues in the minds of legislators–condemned “undignified” lobbying by temperance forces and refused to allow O.S.W.S.A. participation in the “fanatical nonsense” of a “one-sided ‘temperance ballot.’”3 However, this antipathy did not prevent her from appearing before each house of the legislature to lobby for suffrage alone. On this Thursday evening, at the Capitol in Salem, the Senate took up consideration of S.J.R. 2, “providing that the elective franchise should not hereafter be denied to any citizen on account of sex.”4 Following an “able, logical, comprehensive and unanswerable” opening address by Charles Fulton<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-senate-october-7-1880/#footnote_5_31" id="identifier_5_31" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Charles William Fulton (1853-1918): state and U.S. Senator; Republican; born Lima, Ohio; studied law and admitted to Nebraska bar, April, 1875; left for Oregon three days later; taught school at Waterloo (Linn County) until July, when entered law practice in Astoria; elected to state senate, 1878, 1880, 1891, 1893, 1898, 1899, 1901; presiding officer for three sessions; elected by state senate to U.S. Senate, 1903-09; prosecutions of the Mitchell faction for land fraud resulted in defeat in 1908 primaries (Corning 94; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 90-91; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 346-47).">5 of Clatsop, the resolution’s author, “Mrs. Duniway was invited to address the Senate for twenty minutes; which invitation was accepted.”6 Solomon Hirsch<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-senate-october-7-1880/#footnote_7_31" id="identifier_7_31" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="(1839-1902): born Wurtemburg, Germany; emigrated to Oregon, 1858; merchant in Dallas, 1858-61, Silverton, 1861-64, then Portland (founder and partner of Fleishner, Mayer & Co., wholesale dry goods firm); state legislature, 1872; state senate, 1874-85; missed by one vote (his own) being elected by legislature to U.S. Senate; U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1889-92; declined later diplomatic posts to both Constantinople and Brussels (Corning 115; Gaston, Portland 2: 144-49; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 164-69).">7, President of the Senate, introduced her “with his usual gentlemanly and courteous demeanor.” One might expect a speech before an audience of lawmakers to feature the merits and demerits of, to argue for or against, the legislation under consideration. However, such a speech would invite discord, as legislation has its proponents and opponents. Scott Duniway’s rhetorical career repeatedly reveals a preference for appeals that unite rather than divide, for epideictic rather than deliberative form. This address is particularly interesting because it reveals how epideictic gains added persuasive force in particular circumstances. To eschew “the pros and cons of this woman movement” in favor of patriotic appeals to transcendent American political values and chauvinistic appeals to Oregon’s preeminence, as Abigail does here (and elsewhere), is noteworthy. But to do so in the legal context of referendum is remarkable: Where one’s audience must decide not whether to adopt woman suffrage but whether to submit the question to a vote of citizens, deferral of the merits seems even more logical–for isn’t this question reserved to the people?–and appeals, instead, to the values of representative government even more fitting–for what could be more democratic than a plebiscite? Indeed, so tightly is epideictic form knitted to circumstance here that two deliberative sections remain subordinate, their functions modified. First, Scott Duniway speaks against proposed changes in the constitution that would have made amendment (and hence the road to suffrage) more difficult. While the wisdom of these changes might merit its own discussion, here they become simply mean-spirited legal maneuvers intended to thwart democracy. Second, a section of this speech is virtually a synopsis of her arguments addressed to the Illinois legislature three years before, even repeating the phrase aristocracy of sex.8 There, these arguments generate a divisive dichotomy between suffragists, who love liberty, and anti-suffragists, who are “tyrants.” Here, however, this divisiveness is blunted: A lawmaker opposed to women’s enfranchisement still can demonstrate his fealty to the principles of liberty by voting to submit the question to the voting public. If the public votes the amendment down, all the better! In short, this address is not simply an exemplar of epideictic speaking but a vital lesson in the possible synergies among unifying appeals and material circumstances. The Senate approved the suffrage resolution the day following Abigail’s address, by a vote of 21-9. The House took it up the following Wednesday, October 13. Following an “animated” discussion during which Abigail, invited to address the members, only commented briefly that she felt “in the presence of her friends” and “would make no argument, deeming none necessary,” the resolution passed again, 28-25. Suffragists were ecstatic, and Abigail was quick to organize a ratification jubilee and claim credit for the triumph. Quirky and exceedingly burdensome Oregon law required that the resolution be approved by the legislature a second time, in 1882, and then by a majority of voters, in 1884, before finally becoming law.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-senate-october-7-1880/#footnote_9_31" id="identifier_9_31" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The initiative and referendum reform was not adopted until 1902 and did not influence a suffrage campaign until 1906 (Moynihan, Rebel 210; “A Pioneer Incident” n. 2). Scott Duniway personally opposed submission of the suffrage question to the voters. Believing that there was no Constitutional bar to women voting, she favored a simple declaratory act and, two years earlier (in September, 1878), had reprimanded the legislature to its face for its “growing desire . . . to shirk its responsibility” (History of Woman Suffrage 3: 775; see also son Willis’ letter to the Woman’s Journal 21 Feb. 1885). No doubt she also was convinced that suffrage would fare better among the enlightened members of the legislature, whom she had been cultivating for years, than among the rabble of men. But she played the hand that she was dealt.">9 In the afterglow of this first legislative victory, though, even a seasoned campaigner like Scott Duniway badly underestimated how truly long was the road that still lay ahead.10 The text and accompanying description of events are taken from the New Northwest, October 14, 1880. This record of her speech begins in the third-person style typical of reporting, but quickly shifts to a first-person voice that implies direct quotation; the transition is marked by brackets in the first sentence. [Mrs. Duniway expressed her deep appreciation of the high honor the Senate, by its invitation, had conferred upon her as a representative of the great class of otherwise unrepresented though tax-paying citizens of this Commonwealth,] who [,she said] have commissioned me, as their humble servant, to appear before you on their behalf, and urge you to grant to the voters of Oregon the privilege and power to decide whether or not your wives, your mothers, your sisters and your daughters shall be accorded the right to a voice in making the laws of a government which they are taxed to sustain, and to the statutes of which they are held amenable. We are not unmindful that I am here to-night by your courtesy, rather than by acknowledged right, and I confess that I find it a rather difficult task to stand before you and by your consent make a complaint which you have the power–but for your magnanimity–to deprive me of opportunity to make at all. But, if you could read the letters I get from almost every quarter, and by almost every post, written by women who work at the loom, or the churn-dash, or the wash-board, or the cooking stove, and who, through their labor in rearing sons and daughters, are taxed to sustain the government and uphold the laws which you are here to consider, you would not wonder that I, also a mother of men, have the courage to discharge my duty on their behalf to the best of my humble but earnest ability. “Courage,” these Spartan wives and mothers write to me; “we are at home, praying for you.” And, Mr. President, I feel the inspiration of their prayers to-night. They bid me to come before you as their standard-bearer and your friend, to assure you that their interests are your interests, and they will do you good and not evil all the days of your lives. They are willing to trust the voice of the voters, if you will but grant them–their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons–the power to decide that their wives and mothers shall have the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that you claim for yourselves. I do not believe that the Senators will feel that they can afford to establish the dangerous precedent that would result from the proposed decision that it would not be possible to submit another amendment to any part of the State Constitution while two or more amendments are pending. It was wisdom on the part of the framers of the Constitution to provide that no amendment to a pending amendment could be offered by the Legislature before which such amendment, while pending, must go for ratification. The man who, in crossing a stream, used the handle of a scythe for a bridge, but failed to see, till it was too late, that in so doing the blade of the instrument must swing round and cut off his head, was not one whit more short-sighted than the Senator who would be willing to so construe a single clause of the Constitution as to make the Constitution itself inoperative as a whole, or even in part.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-senate-october-7-1880/#footnote_11_31" id="identifier_11_31" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Apparently, opponents of equal suffrage, possibly anticipating defeat, proposed by subterfuge to prevent the legislature of 1882 from considering any suffrage resolution passed in 1880, denying the possibility of a second legislative approval and preventing a referendum (Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881).">11 Mr. President, I learned, while yet a little child, when attending school in a little log cabin in the heart of a frontier wilderness, to revere the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, “All men are created equal; endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” I believe the inspiration of liberty was born with every wise woman’s existence. Certain am I that it has grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength; and I well remember the electric thrills that stirred me in every sentient fiber of my nature, when, as a child, the heroic struggles of the revolutionary fathers and mothers, who freely pledged and freely gave their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor that Columbia might be free, were taught in our schools. The Constitution expressly provides that every citizen shall be guaranteed the equal protection of the laws. And yet, Mr. President, one-half of the people are taxed without representation and governed without consent. This government is not a democracy, nor a republic. It is a government of one-half of the people by the other half, instead. It is an aristocracy of sex, wherein one-half of the citizens enjoy a monopoly of the rights and immunities which are denied to the other half. It is not necessary for me to insult the intelligence of an August Senate like this to make the explanation that the generic term men, as applied to the inalienable rights of the human family, includes women. Men are always willing to admit this fact when women’s taxes are due, or when a woman breaks a law that all persons of her sex are denied a voice in making. The man has never yet lived who has said of a woman convicted of crime, “May it please the Court and the jury, I represent this woman. Punish me!” Women complain that they are rated in law with idiots, insane persons, criminals and Chinamen. Time was when they had the negro for company; but modern legislation has reached out its hand and lifted the colored citizen upon the high pedestal of equality before the law; and to-day he is a United States Marshal, a Senator or a Representative in Congress; a law-maker, before whose mandate your wives and mothers must bow while they proclaim the lesson taught by your government–that taxation without representation is tyranny. We ask you, Mr. President, and gentlemen of the Senate, to take the necessary steps to submit this resolution for amending the Constitution to the votes of the sons of women. We believe that you will do your duty. The eyes of the world are upon you. Oregon has already written her name higher than that of any other State in the Union in her recognition of equal rights for the mothers of men. Her legislation has been liberal because her sons have been free. Let the grand picture of the Father of his Country beam upon you to-night with an inspiration of irresistible power. You are making history. The same spirit of liberty that presided over the destinies of Washington a hundred years ago is presiding over the destinies of the people of Oregon to-day. It is in your power to write the name of your young and growing Commonwealth yet higher–aye, the highest of all in the mighty constellation of the United States of America. It is in your power to place the honor upon the brow of Oregon that alone can accrue to the State which shall take the lead in this grand movement for the enfranchisement of the mothers of men. The blue air of the hoary mountains has answered back to the pellucid atmosphere of the billowy ocean, and filled the men and women of this grand young State with the electric fires of an exalted patriotism. Our people have inhaled the spirit of liberty with their very breath. Let them give Oregon an opportunity to lead the van in the great galaxy of States that will surely fall into line when you shall have set the grand example, and your descendants shall see her shine in the history of the centuries to come with a luster that shall dim the glory of a Massachusetts, a North Carolina or an Old Virginia. Mr. President, I know that this is not the time or place for discussing the pros and cons of this woman movement. These will be considered in their proper place before the people after the action of this Honorable Body, for which we now pray, shall have made it possible for them to give or withhold their votes upon it. Thanking you, gentlemen of the Senate, for the high honor you have conferred upon me in the name of womanhood, in listening thus profoundly to my feeble utterances, I rest our case in your hands. NOTES History of Woman Suffrage 4: 770-71. Moynihan, Rebel 178. New Northwest 16 Sept. 1880, qtd. in Moynihan, Rebel 178-79. Journal of the Senate 134. Charles William Fulton (1853-1918): state and U.S. Senator; Republican; born Lima, Ohio; studied law and admitted to Nebraska bar, April, 1875; left for Oregon three days later; taught school at Waterloo (Linn County) until July, when entered law practice in Astoria; elected to state senate, 1878, 1880, 1891, 1893, 1898, 1899, 1901; presiding officer for three sessions; elected by state senate to U.S. Senate, 1903-09; prosecutions of the Mitchell faction for land fraud resulted in defeat in 1908 primaries (Corning 94; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 90-91; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 1: 346-47). Journal of the Senate 34. (1839-1902): born Wurtemburg, Germany; emigrated to Oregon, 1858; merchant in Dallas, 1858-61, Silverton, 1861-64, then Portland (founder and partner of Fleishner, Mayer & Co., wholesale dry goods firm); state legislature, 1872; state senate, 1874-85; missed by one vote (his own) being elected by legislature to U.S. Senate; U.S. Minister to Turkey, 1889-92; declined later diplomatic posts to both Constantinople and Brussels (Corning 115; Gaston, Portland 2: 144-49; Portrait and Biographical Record of the Willamette 164-69). “Constitutional Liberty and the Aristocracy of Sex.” The initiative and referendum reform was not adopted until 1902 and did not influence a suffrage campaign until 1906 (Moynihan, Rebel 210; “A Pioneer Incident” n. 2). Scott Duniway personally opposed submission of the suffrage question to the voters. Believing that there was no Constitutional bar to women voting, she favored a simple declaratory act and, two years earlier (in September, 1878), had reprimanded the legislature to its face for its “growing desire . . . to shirk its responsibility” (History of Woman Suffrage 3: 775; see also son Willis’ letter to the Woman’s Journal 21 Feb. 1885). No doubt she also was convinced that suffrage would fare better among the enlightened members of the legislature, whom she had been cultivating for years, than among the rabble of men. But she played the hand that she was dealt. Moynihan, Rebel 179. Apparently, opponents of equal suffrage, possibly anticipating defeat, proposed by subterfuge to prevent the legislature of 1882 from considering any suffrage resolution passed in 1880, denying the possibility of a second legislative approval and preventing a referendum (Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881).
OREGON STATE WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION – February 10, 1880
Once again, Scott Duniway, as President of the O.S.W.S.A., delivered the opening address at the association’s annual convention, meeting this year at her residence in Portland. Once again, her principal theme is advances in the cause of woman’s rights.
Once again, Scott Duniway, as President of the O.S.W.S.A., delivered the opening address at the association’s annual convention, meeting this year at her residence in Portland. Once again, her principal theme is advances in the cause of woman’s rights. After this convention, Scott Duniway would take an “off year in politics,” at least officially, with Mr. E. F. Heroy succeeding her as President of the association.1 However, she would chair a constitutional revision committee that, in 1881, would create an association office tailor-made for her and that she would occupy for many years: Vice President at Large.2 The text is taken from the New Northwest, February 12, 1880. The Morning Oregonian also published this speech on February 11 and covered subsequent proceedings on the 13th and 14th; minor discrepancies (beyond punctuation and capitalization) between versions are footnoted. Even the latter’s coverage of these events concluded graciously: “The ladies have good cause to congratulate themselves upon the success of this convention. Harmony, dignity and moderation have characterized their discussions, and much latent wisdom is being developed in their mode of meeting the important public questions that naturally come before them for consideration.”3. Alas, it would not always be so. On this, the occasion of the eighth annual and seventh anniversary meeting of this organization, we are convened under more than ordinarily favorable circumstances. A retrospect of seven years ago recalls a doubting, trembling, hoping few of us who met and organized for the purpose of promoting the cause of liberty, while all the rest of the State and city looked on in the spirit of ridicule and opposition. Now our Association numbers among its gentlemen friends and co-workers clergymen, editors, authors, lawyers, physicians, judges, transportation monopolists, bankers, senators, representatives, professors of colleges, State legislators, artists and artisans of every class; while among the women who are openly allied to the cause are physicians, teachers, artists, and laborers of every order, and last, but by no means least, the great army of workers without wages who dwell in the homes of high and low degree-the reading, thinking, reasoning mass of women, who have learned to appreciate the value of a personal voice in making and directing the laws and usages of the government which they are personally taxed to sustain, and to the power of which they are held amenable if they break a law which they are denied a voice in making. Protected and sustained by this Association, we have, through our officers and members, repeatedly held conventions, addressed legislatures, and regularly presented petitions and memorials for both State and Federal consideration, which have in all cases been favorably received. While our demands have not yet secured for us political equality, they have secured larger opportunities for women in educational, industrial and professional pursuits. We have achieved in many instances all we have asked in regard to the social and civil rights of wife, mother and widow; and we especially congratulate ourselves upon the increasing respect there is everywhere expressed for the final recognition of the one right that includes all others–the right to vote. The right to vote on school questions has already been granted, and women are actually voting thereon.4 Married women’s “sole trader bills”5 and married women’s “property bills”<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_6_29" id="identifier_6_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The original bill was passed in 1874. Subsequent laws, “granting to married women the right to personal use and control of all property received by them through gift, devise or inheritance” and “the right to make contracts and to sue and be sued,” were adopted four years later. A law enabling married women to hold their own wages would be passed in 1880, the year of this speech (Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881; cf. Richey, “Unsinkable” 87).">6 have been passed by the Legislature. Gentlemen of distinction in law, theology and letters now consider it an honor to advocate our equal claims with themselves to the inalienable rights of “life, liberty and happiness.” Glancing from our own State over the other portions of this vast Union, we recognize with pride the fact that when opportunity was granted them by their Legislatures, 40,000 men voted for Woman Suffrage in Michigan; 9,070 in Kansas; 6,666 in Colorado; 26,468 in Minnesota in favor of women’s voting on temperance; and women are not only voting on the school question in Oregon, but in Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, California, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The Minnesota Legislature, at its last session, passed a resolution urging Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment, for Woman Suffrage. Such a bill is now pending in the Iowa Legislature, and has already passed the lower7 House. In the United States Senate, petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment declaring suffrage based upon citizenship without distinction of sex, and memorials praying for the removal of individual women’s political disabilities, have been lately presented by Mr.8 Wheeler9, Vice-President of the United States; Mr. Beck10 and Mr. Williams11, of Kentucky; Mr. Allison12 and Mr. Kirkwood13, of Iowa; Mr. Dawes14, of Massachusetts; Mr. Ferry<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_15_29" id="identifier_15_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Thomas White Ferry (1827-1896): mercantilist; Michigan House of Representatives, 1850-52; state Senate, 1856; U.S. House, 1865-71; U.S. Senate, 1871-83; President Pro Tempore of Senate for 44th and 45th Congresses; during Grant’s second term (1873-77), became Vice-President upon death of Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, November, 1875; presided over impeachment trial of Secretary of War William Belknap, and over sixteen joint meetings of House and Senate over 1877 Hayes-Tilden presidential contest (Biographical Directory 19, 992).">15, of Michigan; Mr. Kernan16, of New York; Mr. Pendleton17, of Ohio; Mr. Conkling18, of New York; Mr. Davis19, of Illinois; Mr. Anthony20, of Rhode Island; Mr. Baldwin21, of Michigan; Mr. Voorhees22, of Indiana; Mr. Saunders23, of Nebraska; Mr. Farley24, of California; Mr. Vest25 and Mr. Cockrell26, of Missouri; Mr. Paddock27, of Nebraska; Mr. Booth28, of California; Mr. Burnside29, of Rhode Island; Mr. Wallace30, of Pennsylvania; Mr. MacPherson31, of New Jersey; Mr. Cameron32, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Hoar33, of Massachusetts; Mr. Plumb34, of Kansas; Mr. McDonald35, of Indiana; Mr. Hamlin36, of Maine; and Mr. Thurman37, of Ohio. We live in hope that our own Senator Slater<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_38_29" id="identifier_38_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="James Harvey Slater (1826-1899): Congressman, editor; born near Springfield, Illinois; came to California, 1849, and to Oregon, 1850, settling at Corvallis; admitted to bar, 1854; clerk, U.S. District Court, 1854-56; territorial legislator, 1857-59; owner/editor, Oregon Weekly Union, 1859-61; state legislator, 1859-60; moved to Baker City, 1862, and to La Grande, 1866; state district attorney, 1866-68; U.S. House, 1871-73; U.S. Senate, 1879-85; state railroad commissioner, 1887-89; leader, anti-Asahel Bush faction, Democratic party (Corning 226; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 276-77).">38 will soon follow the example of his illustrious predecessors. (Women are as fully enfranchised as men in Wyoming, and as nearly so as any man in Utah who is not a Mormon.)39 Congress has passed a bill in both Houses, by overwhelming majorities, admitting women to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States, and it is manifestly absurd to admit them to plead cases involving important interests between man and man before the highest tribunal in the land, and yet deny them the right to a voice in closing a dram-shop or erecting a town pump. Appeals for the enfranchisement of women were heard during the forty-fifth Congress by the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and the arguments thus presented were printed in the Congressional Record. The forty-sixth Congress contains an unusually large proportion of new Representatives, fresh from the people, ready for the discussion of new issues, who have, as you have seen, already manifested a just spirit toward the repeated appeals of women citizens for political recognition.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_40_29" id="identifier_40_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="The Congress in session 1879-81; the financial upheavals of the mid-1870s were partly responsible for turnover in the midterm Congressional elections of 1878, in which the Greenback-Labor Party, for example, captured fourteen seats (“Greenback movement”).">40 From the very birth of our nation, gifted women like Abigail Adams<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_41_29" id="identifier_41_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818): prolific letter-writer and First Lady; wife of John Adams, second president of the U.S., 1797-1801; mother of John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the U.S., 1825-29; the “Abigail” for whom Scott Duniway was named (Butterfield; Willard and Livermore 1: 5).">41 and Lucretia Mott<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_42_29" id="identifier_42_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer).">42, inspired by the grand principles of a free government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, have been asking that the rights of women as citizens of the Republic be granted. The history of the nation during the past twenty years has educated women into broader ideas of individual citizenship and personal liberty, and taught them the way to attain political equality by national legislation. The African race was enfranchised by a constitutional amendment, and placed in political supremacy over the teachers, trainers, wives and mothers of statesmen. Women now demand a Sixteenth Amendment that shall place them on terms of equality as law-makers with the men of every class, color and degree, to whose power they are held in abeyance, and whose rule they are taxed to sustain. Our worst stumbling-block hitherto has been the timidity of women, mistaken for apathy by husbands and other opponents of public agitation–a timidity that has kept many of them aloof from the work in which they are so much needed. These conventions will go far toward43 breaking through the trammels of custom and placing such women in the front of the ranks–women whose duty, gauged by their talents and inclinations, would long ere this have placed them in the lead but for the social and domestic trammels that have held them back. A realization of individual liberty, of complete equality with those around us, and a consciousness of perfect freedom to act according to our highest conception of duty, alone can give the highest impulses for the development of a noble character. I would by no means underrate the important duties of wifehood and motherhood. But I fain would see all men and women learn and understand that a woman who does her duty only as a wife and mother, fails also in that duty quite as much as any man would correspondingly fail in all things, if he only did his duty as a husband and father, forgetful of other obligations (equally important, because including these) that he owes to society and the commonwealth. Our demand for personal and political liberty and responsibility involves the same principle that underlies the foundation of a free government for men. Every woman should bear in mind that injustice to one woman is injustice to all. Instead of forming clubs for the study of Greek art, heathen mythology and microscopic investigations, women should form liberty clubs, and devote their spare time to investigating the science44 of government and the general good of the whole people.<a href="https://asduniway.org/oregon-state-woman-suffrage-association-february-10-1880/#footnote_45_29" id="identifier_45_29" class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" title="In 1886, the New Northwest noted approvingly that Jane Cunningham Croly, founder of Sorosis, the first woman’s club, and its president for nine years, had been defeated for re-election, henceforth making it “permissible to mention Woman Suffrage, or any other live question, in the sacred precincts”; this change, it hoped, “will have much weight in determining the wavering views of many men and women who need ultra respectable backing to cause them to champion the right” (1 Apr. 1886). However, this early disdain for the woman’s club movement would change as Abigail came to see club work as a way to reach conservatives. By the mid-1890s, Scott Duniway herself was organizing and participating in clubs in Portland and the state (About Scott Duniway n. 21). She also came to believe that club work could help quell the prohibition “boomerang” by providing outlets other than temperance for women’s pent-up civic energies (see “Greeting and Reminiscence).”">45 This is the primal object of these conventions. Let our sessions be earnest, harmonious and spirited. I am happy to announce that we have the material in readiness46 for a grand intellectual, logical and musical treat; and I shall place the same in the hands of the Committee on Programme, with a confident feeling that they will do their duty. So shall a report go out from this Convention that, by the aid of the public press, shall awaken thought in every community where the influence of types is felt; women in lonely farm-houses will read of our work and take courage; men in the market places will pause and read and commend; school children will discuss the question, and everywhere it will gain added impetus through your deliberations. NOTES Morning Oregonian 14 Feb. 1880. Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881. Morning Oregonian 14 Feb. 1880. School suffrage was adopted during the 1878 legislative session. See Scott Duniway’s address to the seventh annual O.S.W.S.A. convention. This law, shielding the assets of businesswomen against the threat of seizure by their husbands’ creditors, had been adopted in 1872 (Richey, “Unsinkable” 87; Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881). The original bill was passed in 1874. Subsequent laws, “granting to married women the right to personal use and control of all property received by them through gift, devise or inheritance” and “the right to make contracts and to sue and be sued,” were adopted four years later. A law enabling married women to hold their own wages would be passed in 1880, the year of this speech (Morning Oregonian 9 Feb. 1881; cf. Richey, “Unsinkable” 87). Oregonian: “Iowa” Oregonian: “Wm.” William Almon Wheeler (1819-1887): lawyer and Whig New York state assemblyman, 1850-51, who became a Republican, 1855; U.S. Representative, 1861-63, 1869-77; Vice President to Rutherford B. Hayes, 1877-81 James Burnie Beck (1822-1890): Senator, 1877-90; Democrat John Stuart Williams (1818-1898): Senator, 1879-85; Democrat William Boyd Allison (1829-1908): Senator, 1873-1908; Republican Samuel Jordan Kirkwood (1813-1894): Senator, 1866-67, 1877-81; Republican Henry Laurens Dawes (1816-1903): Senator, 1875-93; Republican Thomas White Ferry (1827-1896): mercantilist; Michigan House of Representatives, 1850-52; state Senate, 1856; U.S. House, 1865-71; U.S. Senate, 1871-83; President Pro Tempore of Senate for 44th and 45th Congresses; during Grant’s second term (1873-77), became Vice-President upon death of Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, November, 1875; presided over impeachment trial of Secretary of War William Belknap, and over sixteen joint meetings of House and Senate over 1877 Hayes-Tilden presidential contest (Biographical Directory 19, 992). Francis Kernan (1816-1892): Senator, 1875-81; Democrat George Hunt Pendleton (1825-1889): Senator, 1879-85; Democrat Roscoe Conkling (1829-1889): Senator, 1867-81; Republican David Davis (1815-1886): Senator, 1877-83; Independent Henry Bowen (1815-1884): Senator, 1859-84; Republican Henry Porter Baldwin (1814-1892): Senator, 1879-81; Republican Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (1827-1897): Senator, 1877-97; Democrat Alvin Saunders (1817-1899): Senator, 1877-83; Republican James Thompson Farley (1829-1886): Senator, 1879-85; Democrat George Graham Vest (1830-1904): Senator, 1879-1903; Democrat Francis Marion Cockrell (1834-1915): Senator, 1875-1905; Democrat Algernon Sidney Paddock (1830-1897): Senator, 1875-81, 1887-93; Republican Newton Booth (1825-1892): Senator, 1875-81; Independent Republican, 1875-77; Republican, 1877-81 Ambrose Everett Burnside (1824-1881): Senator, 1875-81; Republican William Andrew Wallace (1827-1896): Senator, 1875-81; Democrat John Rhoderic McPherson (1833-1897): Senator, 1877-95; Democrat James Donald Cameron (1833-1918): Senator, 1877-97; Republican George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904): Senator, 1877-1904; Republican Preston B. Plumb (1837-1891): Senator, 1877-91; Republican Joseph Ewing McDonald (1819-1891): Senator, 1875-81; Democrat Hannibal Hamlin (1809-1891): Senator, 1848-61, 1869-81; Democrat, 1848-57; Republican, 1857-61, 1869-81 Allen Granberry Thurman (1813-1895): Senator, 1869-81; Democrat James Harvey Slater (1826-1899): Congressman, editor; born near Springfield, Illinois; came to California, 1849, and to Oregon, 1850, settling at Corvallis; admitted to bar, 1854; clerk, U.S. District Court, 1854-56; territorial legislator, 1857-59; owner/editor, Oregon Weekly Union, 1859-61; state legislator, 1859-60; moved to Baker City, 1862, and to La Grande, 1866; state district attorney, 1866-68; U.S. House, 1871-73; U.S. Senate, 1879-85; state railroad commissioner, 1887-89; leader, anti-Asahel Bush faction, Democratic party (Corning 226; Scott, History of the Oregon Country 5: 276-77). Six days after this speech, a similar petition by “Abigail Scott Dunniway, Julia A. Johnson, and others, citizens of Portland, Oregon,” would be received in the U.S. House of Representatives (Journal of the House 490). The Congress in session 1879-81; the financial upheavals of the mid-1870s were partly responsible for turnover in the midterm Congressional elections of 1878, in which the Greenback-Labor Party, for example, captured fourteen seats (“Greenback movement”). Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818): prolific letter-writer and First Lady; wife of John Adams, second president of the U.S., 1797-1801; mother of John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the U.S., 1825-29; the “Abigail” for whom Scott Duniway was named (Butterfield; Willard and Livermore 1: 5). Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793-1880): Quaker minister, peace advocate, abolitionist, religious reformer; born Nantucket; became known as one of most eloquent ministers in Philadelphia, aligned with most liberal, or Hicksite, element of Society of Friends; helped form Philadelphia female anti-slavery society, c. 1833, presiding over it for most of its existence; rebuffed delegate to World Anti-Slavery Convention, London, 1840; following passage of fugitive-slave law, home was an asylum (Tolles; Olson and Bayer). Oregonian: “towards” Oregonian: “service” In 1886, the New Northwest noted approvingly that Jane Cunningham Croly, founder of Sorosis, the first woman’s club, and its president for nine years, had been defeated for re-election, henceforth making it “permissible to mention Woman Suffrage, or any other live question, in the sacred precincts”; this change, it hoped, “will have much weight in determining the wavering views of many men and women who need ultra respectable backing to cause them to champion the right” (1 Apr. 1886). However, this early disdain for the woman’s club movement would change as Abigail came to see club work as a way to reach conservatives. By the mid-1890s, Scott Duniway herself was organizing and participating in clubs in Portland and the state (About Scott Duniway n. 21). She also came to believe that club work could help quell the prohibition “boomerang” by providing outlets other than temperance for women’s pent-up civic energies (see “Greeting and Reminiscence).” Oregonian: “readers”